England under the Tudors Part 2

[Sidenote: 1492-95 Ireland]

Meanwhile, Ireland also had been undergoing judicious treatment. Kildare, removed from the Deputy-s.h.i.+p in 1492, came over to England to give an account of himself in the following year. Here he was detained until, in the autumn of 1494, the King appointed a new three-year-old Governor in the person of his second son Henry, whom he also created Duke of York, making Sir Edward Poynings Deputy. Poynings was an experienced and capable soldier, who had been in command before Sluys in the recent campaign; and on his departure for Ireland Kildare went with him. Both the ex-Deputy and the Earl of Ormonde promised to render loyal service; but it was no very long time before Kildare was sent back to England under accusations of treason. We may here antic.i.p.ate matters by observing that this was the last case of misbehaviour on his part. He won his way once more into the royal favour, and when Poynings left Ireland in 1496 Kildare yet again went back as Deputy, which office he retained for the remainder of Henry's reign, and a portion of his son's also.

It is curious to observe in the turbulent Deputy traits of that audacious humour which we are wont to regard as peculiarly Irish: a characteristic fully appreciated by the English King. When taken to task for burning the Cathedral at Cashel, he is reported to have said that he would not have done so, only the bishop was inside. His casual announcement on a previous occasion that he could not obey the royal summons to England because the country could not get on without him was paralleled either in 1493 or 1495 --it is uncertain which--by his defence against the Bishop of Meath's charges. He said he must be represented by Counsel; the King replied that he might have whom he would. "Give me your hand," quoth the Earl. "Here it is," said the King. "Well," said Kildare, "I can see no better man than you, and by St. Bride I will choose none other." Said the Bishop, "You see what manner of man he is. All Ireland cannot rule him." "Then," said the King, "he must be the man to rule all Ireland."

[Sidenote: Poynings in Ireland 1494-96]

The government of Poynings was not prolonged, but it was very much to the point. "Poynings' Law," pa.s.sed by the Parliament a.s.sembled at Drogheda in December, 1494, fixed Const.i.tutional procedure for a very long time. Irish Parliaments were to be summoned only with the approval of the King's Council in England, and only after it had also approved the measures which were to be submitted to them by the Irish Deputy and Council. In effect, however, these legislative functions at this time were hardly more limited than those of English Parliaments, which were summoned at the King's pleasure, and only had what might be called "Government Bills" submitted to them. The royal Council was practically in the position of a Cabinet holding office as representing not the parliamentary majority but the King's personal views. The Parliament might discuss and accept or reject, but had not as yet acquired a practical initiative itself. At the same time that this law was pa.s.sed, a declaratory Act abolished the theory which had grown up at an early stage of the conflict between the White and Red Roses, of regarding Ireland as a country where a rebel in England was a free man: a notion which had greatly facilitated the intrigues of both Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck on Irish soil. Further, besides some enactments for checking feudal customs which tended to disorder, it was ordained that the princ.i.p.al castles should always be under the command of Englishmen.

Poynings also endeavoured, by bestowing pensions (on terms) on some of the princ.i.p.al chiefs outside the Pale--such as O'Neill in Ulster and O'Brien in the west--to convert their position into one of semi-official responsibility to the official Government. A basis for the maintenance of law and order having thus been provided, the Irish difficulty was solved for the time when "the man to rule all Ireland," benevolently disposed to a King who had shown that he knew the right way to take him, was restored to the office of Deputy.

[Sidenote: 1495 Survey of the situation]

In the early spring, then, of 1495, this was the position of affairs.

Perkin Warbeck lay at the court of Margaret of Burgundy; but his plans had been upset by Clifford's information and the punishment of the ringleaders in England. Poynings was in Ireland, and the prospect of keeping that country in reasonable order was unusually promising. Charles VIII. had just made himself master of Naples; and the Spanish sovereigns (who had completed the destruction of the Moorish dominion in Granada some three years earlier) were now occupied in forming with the Pope, Venice, Milan, and Maximilian the Holy League against French aggression; into which they were anxious to draw Henry, whose weight if thrown into the other scale would be of considerable value to France. For the last two years, since the treaty of Barcelona, they had evaded the recognition or reconstruction of any compact with England; but under the changed conditions, while they would not admit that the old engagements were binding, they offered to frame new treaties for Henry's inclusion in the League, at the same time confirming the project of the marriage between their daughter Katharine and the Prince of Wales. Henry, however, was now in a much stronger position at home; and though he desired the Spanish alliance, he had no intention of allowing that bait to seduce him into making himself a cat's-paw. France was offering a counter-inducement in the shape of a marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Bourbon; Henry indicated that while Maximilian was fostering the pretensions of the impostor Warbeck, it was not serious politics to talk of being a.s.sociated with him in the League. Spain might make promises on Maximilian's behalf, but could not ensure that he would keep them.

[Sidenote: 1495 Warbeck attempts invasion]

Time was working in Henry's favour. In July (1495) an expedition sailed from Flanders to place Perkin on the English throne. Maximilian's hopes were high: he bragged to the Venetians that the "Duke of York" would immediately unseat the Tudor, and when he was on the throne, England would be at the beck of the League. The Emperor's impracticability was sufficiently shown by his having procured from Perkin his own recognition as heir, if the pretender should die without issue. The expedition attempted to land at Deal, but the men of Kent a.s.sembled in arms, and drove it off with ignominious ease. For once Henry was severe, and put to death no fewer than 150 of Warbeck's followers, who had been taken prisoners.

Warbeck himself did not even set foot on the realm he claimed, but made for Ireland where he had first been so warmly welcomed. Here his old supporter Desmond took up his cause again, and Waterford was attacked by sea and land; but there was no general rising, and Poynings had no difficulty in raising the siege. Foiled both in England and Ireland, Perkin now betook himself to Scotland to obtain the help of the young King, James IV.

[Sidenote: Success of Henry's diplomacy]

The affair showed conclusively how small was the danger in England of a Yorkist rising in favour of the pretender--a fact very fully recognised by Ferdinand and Isabella, though Maximilian clung pertinaciously to his protege. Moreover, the position of the League was somewhat precarious, since both Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and the Venetians, were suspected with justice of readiness to make their own terms with France. It was more than ever necessary to bring Henry into the combination; and Henry, still diplomatically suave, was less than ever prepared to accept conditions which would fetter him inconveniently. He would not commit himself to make war on France except at his own time; and Maximilian must definitely and conclusively repudiate Warbeck. At last in July, 1496, the new League was concluded. Henry's diplomacy achieved a distinct triumph.

His alliance had been won, but only on his own terms; all he wished to secure had been secured. The Spanish sovereigns were so far from feeling that they could make a tool of him that they were in considerable trepidation lest he should still throw them over if a tolerably legitimate excuse offered, and were anxious to do all they could to conciliate him without betraying the full extent of their fears. Henry had already, in February, terminated the commercial war with the Flemings by the treaty with Philip known as the _Intercursus Magnus_, which included a proviso against the admission into Philip's territories of rebels against the English King.

[Sidenote: 1496 Warbeck and the King of Scots]

When Perkin Warbeck made his way to Scotland the young King of that country was already fully informed as to the nature of his claims. James, when a boy of sixteen, had taken part in the rebellion headed by Douglas Earl of Angus, in which his father the late King had been overthrown at Sauchie Burn and murdered after the battle. He was now twenty-four years of age, of brilliant parts, no mean scholar, an admirable athlete, and ambitious to raise the name of Scotland among the nations. His weakness lay mainly in a boyish impulsiveness, which often caused him to mar well-laid plans on the spur of the moment, and in an exaggerated fondness for chivalric ideas more appropriate to a knight-errant than to a king or a leader of armies. Perkin appealed to him as early as 1492; and before the pretender's expedition sailed, Tyrconnel, chief of the O'Donnells of the north-west of Ireland, presented himself in Scotland to renew the appeal. The antagonism of Scottish feeling to the ruling powers in England was chronic. There was a treaty of peace between England and Scotland, but the unfailing turbulence of the borders kept each country constantly provided with a tolerable excuse for accusing the other of having broken its engagements. James was well within his rights in receiving the claimant; of the justice of whose t.i.tle he evidently persuaded himself, since he bestowed a kinswoman of his own upon him in marriage, Lady Katharine Gordon. In the summer of 1496 he was making active preparations for an incursion into England on Warbeck's behalf; largely influenced no doubt by the promise that, should it prove successful, Berwick, which had been finally ceded to England fourteen years before, was to be once more surrendered to the Scots. The astute Henry turned all this to account, by impressing on the Spanish and Venetian agents the urgent necessity laid on him to abstain from military operations against France while Scotland was so threatening.

[Sidenote 1: A Scottish incursion (Sept.)]

[Sidenote 2: 1497]

James did in fact raid the North of England in September; but the incursion was a raid and nothing more. Perkin, to the surprise and even contempt both of Scots and English, protested against the sanguinary methods of border warfare, on behalf of the people whom he aspired to rule over. But the people themselves would have none of him. The expedition withdrew without having produced even the semblance of a Yorkist rising. After that, James no longer felt eager to plunge into a war on behalf of the pretender: but was inclined to retain him as a political a.s.set. When, in the following year (1497), Charles VIII.--with a precisely similar object in view-- offered him a considerable sum if he would send his guest over to France, the Scots King declined. In July, however, Perkin sailed from Scotland, apparently with intent to try Ireland again, where Kildare was once more Deputy. Henry had utilised the raid to obtain the recommendation of a large grant and loans from the Great Council forthwith; Parliament, which was called for January (1497), ratifying the grant as a subsidy. The raising of the loans had, however, been proceeded with, without waiting.

[Sidenote: The Cornish rising]

The defence of England against invading Scots was a matter of much importance to the northern counties, but lacked personal interest in Cornwall. Year after year the King had been receiving subsidies to arm for impending wars, borrowing, and levying benevolences. When a hostile France was the excuse, the population might murmur but was quite as willing to pay as could reasonably be expected. But the Scots had never invaded Cornwall, and the Cornishmen felt that it was time to protest. They would march to London--peaceably, of course--to demand according to custom the removal of the King's evil counsellors; Morton and Bray, to wit, who probably used their influence in reality to mitigate rather than intensify the royal demands. The insurgent leaders were a blacksmith, Joseph, and a lawyer, Flamock--appropriate chiefs for working men trying honestly enough to formulate what they had been led to regard as a grievance of what we should now call an unconst.i.tutional character. With bills and bows, some thousands of them started on their march; preserving their peaceable character, till at Taunton the appearance of a commissioner for collecting the tax proved too much for their self-restraint, and the man was killed. A little later they were joined by Lord Audley, who became their leader. They expected the men of Kent, who of old had risen under Wat Tyler and again under Jack Cade, to take up the cause: but Kent did not recognise the similarity of the present conditions and gave them no welcome.

[Sidenote: The suppression (June)]

Meantime, Henry had not been idle; but he saw that the insurgents were not rousing the country as they progressed, and therefore he judged that the further they were drawn away from their own country the better. Except for a slight skirmish at Guildford, the Cornishmen were not actively interfered with till they encamped on Blackheath. Then, on June 17th, the royal forces proceeded to envelop them. Some two thousand were slain on the field.

Audley, the lawyer, and the blacksmith, were put to death as traitors; the rest were pardoned, as having been not so much rebels as victims of demagogic arts.

[Sidenote: Warbeck's final failure (Sept.)]

The policy of leniency was not entirely successful, for the Cornishmen imagined it merely meant that the King recognised the impossibility of dealing sternly with every one who thought as they did. Warbeck, now in Ireland, where he was not finding the sympathy for which he had hoped, received messages to the effect that if he came to Cornwall he would find plenty of supporters. He came promptly, with a scanty following enough; but only a few thousand men joined him. He marched on Exeter, but that loyal town stoutly refused to admit him, and his attempts to carry gates and walls failed completely. Royal troops were on the march: the gentlemen of Devon, headed by the Earl, were up for the King. Perkin marched to Taunton, and then fled by night to take sanctuary at Beaulieu in Hamps.h.i.+re, where he was surrounded, and very soon submitted himself to the King's clemency.

[Sidenote: The Scottish truce]

In the meantime the Scottish King, though his sentiments towards Perkin had sensibly cooled, had no intention of leaving him in the lurch, and had advanced on Norham Castle very shortly after his protege had sailed for Ireland. The Earl of Surrey, however, who commanded in the north, was well prepared, and very soon took the field with twenty thousand men. James was obliged to withdraw, and though he challenged the Earl to single combat with Berwick as the stake, Surrey replied that Berwick was not his property but his master's, and he must regretfully decline the proposed method of arbitrament. He advanced over the border, making some captures and doing considerable damage; but after a week, commissariat difficulties made him retire in turn. In September Perkin's Cornish rising collapsed, and a seven years' treaty was entered upon between the two countries.

[Sidenote: The end of Perkin Warbeck 1497-99]

Towards the pretender and his followers, the King behaved with his usual leniency. A few leaders only were put to death; other penalties were reserved. Warbeck was compelled publicly to read at Exeter and later in London a confession of the true story of his own origin and that of the conspiracy; and was then relegated to not very strict confinement under surveillance. His supporters were allowed to purchase their pardon by heavy fines, which satisfactorily aided in the replenishment of the royal treasury.

The end of the pretender's story may be told in antic.i.p.ation. It was ignominious and less creditable in its accompanying circ.u.mstances to Henry.

In the summer of the next year, 1498, Perkin tried to escape, was promptly recaptured, set in the stocks, and required to read his confession publicly both in Westminster and London. He was then placed in strict confinement in the Tower, where the luckless Warwick had been kept a prisoner for thirteen years. The son of Clarence, still little more than a boy, was the only figure-head left for Yorkist malcontents. Another attempt to impersonate him by a youth named Ralph Wilford was nipped in the bud at the beginning of 1499; but Henry's nerve seems to have been seriously shaken by it, and probably he now began to make up his mind to get rid of his kinsman. Then some kind of conspiracy was concocted, in which both Warbeck and Warwick were involved; on 23rd November, 1499, Perkin was hanged, and five days later Warwick was beheaded, dying as he had lived a victim to his name; suffering for no treason or wrong-doing of his own, but simply because he was the nephew of Edward IV.

[Sidenote: 1498 The situation]

When the year 1497 closed, the preliminaries of a Scottish peace had been agreed upon; Perkin Warbeck was a prisoner: and the French King had already found his position in Italy untenable, and agreed to evacuate Naples and surrender the crown. His death and the accession of the Duke of Orleans as Lewis XII. in April of the next year further altered the face of international politics, already changing with the final collapse of Warbeck and his disappearance as a p.a.w.n in the game.

CHAPTER III

HENRY VII (iii), 1498-1509-THE DYNASTY a.s.sURED

[Sidenote: Scotland and England]

From time immemorial almost, it might be said that Scotland had been a perpetual menace to her southern neighbour. Since the days of Bruce she had, it is true, been torn by ceaseless dissensions; a succession of long royal minorities with intrigues over the regency, family feuds between the great barons, strong kings who found themselves warring on a turbulent n.o.bility, weak ones who could exercise no control, had not given the country much chance of consolidation; but the one binding sentiment that could be relied on in a crisis was antagonism to England. To settle the question by conquest had been proved impossible. Scotland might be over-run, but she could not be held in subjection. If England's eyes were bent on France, she must still manage to keep a watch on the north: but so long as dissensions were raging, there was not much fear of anything more serious than raiding expeditions.

[Sidenote: Henry's Scottish policy]

To keep Scotland innocuous was a primary object with the Tudor King. At the time when he grasped the sceptre of England, the King of Scots, James III., was a feeble ruler surrounded by unpopular favourites, with a baronage preparing to rise against him, and there was little danger to be apprehended. He was over-thrown and murdered in 1488. But James IV, who succeeded to the throne was of a different type. He was only a boy, however, and Henry was not long in initiating a policy, more fully developed by his descendants, of purchasing the support of leading n.o.bles, notably at this time and for forty years to come, the Earls of Angus-with whom there was a compact as early as 1491. James, however, soon proved himself a popular and vigorous monarch, of a type which attracted the loyalty of his subjects, with a strong disposition to make his country a serious factor in the politics of the time, and by no means devoid of political sagacity despite his unfortunate impulsiveness and want of balance. To block Scotland out of the field by the simple process of keeping her thoroughly occupied with internal factions was not practicable under these conditions, and the att.i.tude of James in the affair of Perkin Warbeck showed that he must be taken into serious account. Henry's political acuteness recognised in alliance with Scotland a more hopeful solution of the national problem than in eternal strife. The idea of a matrimonial connexion had indeed once before, since the days of Edward I., taken shape in the union of James I. to Jane Beaufort; but with little practical effect. This idea Henry revived in a form destined ultimately to revolutionise the relations of the two kingdoms. His own eldest daughter Margaret was but eighteen years younger than the King of Scots--quite near enough for compatibility. From the time of the peace entered upon after Warbeck's capture, Henry began to work with this marriage as one of his objects. His foresight and sagacity is marked by the fact that he recognised--and did not shrink from the possibility--that a Scottish monarch might thus one day find himself heir to the throne of England.

[Sidenote 1: France and England]

[Sidenote 2: 1498]

The peace-policy towards Scotland was facilitated by the development of friendly relations with France, especially after the accession of Lewis XII.: for the traditional "auld alliance," between France and Scotland, had proved times out of mind too strong to be over-ridden by English treaties.

If France wanted Scottish help, or Scotland wanted French help, there was always some excuse for rendering it; the plain truth being that no treaties could restrain the forays and counter-forays of the border clans on both sides of the Tweed, whether the Wardens of the Marches winked at them or not; so that there was, in either country, a standing pretext for declaring that the other had broken truce. An instance of these border difficulties occurred within a few months of the truce of December, 1497. A small party of Scots crossed the border, and appeared in the neighbourhood of Norham.

They were challenged, and replied--with insolence or with proper spirit, according to the point of view. Thereupon they were attacked by superior numbers; some were slain; in the pursuit, damage was done on the north side of the border. The Scots King felt that he had been outraged, and was on the verge of breaking off all negotiations with his brother of England. It required all the diplomatic skill of Fox (at this time Bishop of Durham), and the mediatorial efforts of the Spaniard Ayala to prevent a serious breach from resulting.

[Sidenote: Marriage negotiations, 1498-1503]

The opportunity, however, was seized by Fox to emphasise his master's pacific intentions by bringing forward the proposal for the marriage of James with Margaret. Nevertheless, for the next twelve months, Henry displayed no eagerness in the matter. Margaret was only in her eighth year, so that in any case the marriage could not be completed for some time; but apart from that, there was already existing a project of marriage between James and one of the Spanish princesses--which Spain had no real wish to carry out, while James was disposed to push it. It would appear, therefore, that Henry meant to give effect to his own scheme, but did not intend Spain to feel free of the complication while it could be used as a means of pressure.

[Sidenote: Marriage of James IV, and Margaret 1503]

At last, however, in July, 1499, a fresh treaty of peace was concluded with Scotland, but it was not till January, 1502, that the marriage treaty was finally ratified; the marriage to take place in September, 1503 (when Margaret would be nearly thirteen), and the two Kings to render each other mutual aid in case either of them was attacked. James, however, declined to bind himself permanently to refuse renewal of the French alliance. There was much characteristic haggling over dower and jointure, matters in which the Tudors always drove the hardest bargain they could. The ceremony was performed by proxy, after the fas.h.i.+on of the times, the day after the treaty was ratified; and the actual marriage took place at the time fixed, in the autumn of 1503--a momentous event, since it brought the Stuarts into the direct line of succession, next to descendants of Henry in the male line; and--inasmuch as one of Henry's sons had no children, and the other no grandchildren--ultimately united on one head the Crowns of England and Scotland, exactly one hundred years after the marriage.

[Sidenote: Spain and England: marriage negotiations, 1488-99]

In the meantime the other and much older project for the union between the Prince of Wales and a daughter of Spain had been carried out. Originally, Henry's prime motive in this matter had been to secure a decisive recognition of his dynasty by the sovereigns, whom he regarded as the greatest political force in Europe. By this time, however, (1498), the stability of his throne and of the succession was no longer in peril; but Spain was still the Power whose alliance would give the best guarantees against hostile combinations. Neither Spain nor England wished to be involved in war with France; but neither country could view her aggrandis.e.m.e.nt with complete equanimity. At the same time, while her ambitions were chiefly directed to Italy both could afford for the most part to abstain from active hostilities. On the other hand, times had changed since Henry had been ready to go almost cap-in-hand to Ferdinand and Isabella for their support. The Spanish sovereigns were now quite as much afraid of his joining France as he was of any step that they could take. So the marriage treaty was ratified in 1497 on terms satisfactory enough to Henry; and both in 1498 and 1499 proxy ceremonies took place. In the latter year, clauses left somewhat vague in the earlier treaties were given a clearer definition in a sense favourable to Henry.

[Sidenote: 1499 Lewis XII]

The accession of Lewis XII. in 1497 affected French policy. Lewis required in the first place, to gain the friends.h.i.+p of the Pope Alexander VI., in order to obtain a divorce from his wife and a dispensation to marry Charles's widow, Anne of Brittany, so as to retain the duchy. In the second place, he claimed Milan as his own in right of his descent from Valentina Visconti (not as an appanage of the French Crown). He was anxious then to conciliate both Spain and England, and ready to make concessions to both in order to hold them neutral. His first steps, therefore, aimed at satisfying them, and at detaching the Archduke Philip from his father Maximilian; all of which objects were rapidly accomplished, England obtaining the renewal of the treaty of Etaples, with additional undertakings in the matter of harbouring rebels. Lewis made separate treaties with Spain and with Philip; but the former remained none the less anxious on the score of a possible further _rapprochement_ between France and England.