Richmond crowned in the battle-field-Henry VII. crowned at Westminster-His parliamentary title-Marriage with Elizabeth of York-Henry VII. suited to his times-Imposture of Lambert Simnel-Battle of Stoke-Alleged harsh treatment of the widow of Edward IV. -The earl of Warwick exhibited to the people-Unreal war and real taxation-An English army in France-A hurried peace concluded at Estaples-Its motives.

RICHARD III. lies covered with wounds in the marsh of Redland. It was a part of the policy of the victors to heap insult and degradation upon the poor remains of the man who chose rather to perish than to save himself by flight; and thus his body, "naked and despoiled, was trussed behind a poursuivant of arms, like a hog or a calf, the head and the arms hanging on the one side of the horse, and the legs on the other side, and all besprinkled with mire and blood was brought to the Gray-friars church at Leicester." Thus writes Grafton, one of the meanest of the eulogists of Henry VII. The earl of Richmond, he says, ascended to the top of a little mountain, and there rendered thanks to his soldiers and friends. "Then the people rejoiced and clapped their hands, crying up to heaven, King Henry, king Henry. When the lord Stanley saw the good will and gladness of the people, he took the crown of king Richard which was found amongst the spoil in the field, and set it on the earl's head, as though he had been elected king by the voice of the people, as in ancient times past in divers realms it hath been accustomed." In the evening the camp of Richmond, now king Henry VII., was removed to Leicester; and, two days after, the conqueror

1485.]

HENRY VII. CROWNED-HIS PARLIAMENTARY TITLE.

209

went forward to London. He chose to consider himself to have won the crown of England by conquest; and he held to the delusion in his latter years, providing by his last will, "that our executors cause to be made an image of a king, representing our own person, the same to be of timber, covered and wrought with plates of fine gold, in manner of an armed man; and upon the same armour a coat-armour of our arms of England and France, enamelled, with a sword and spurs accordingly; and the said image to kneel upon a table of silver and gilt, and holding betwixt his hands the crown which it pleased God to give us, with the victory of our enemy at our first field."* Henry, earl of Richmond, who came to put down an usurper, was himself an usurper in every sense. Bacon has clearly stated the dilemma in which the new king was placed. He had been engaged to marry the lady Elizabeth, under the compact by which he was to be supported in his pretensions. This claim, through the daughter of Edward IV., was most likely to content the people, who had become attached to the house of York, and were satisfied of the clearness of their title to the throne. But relying upon the title to be obtained by this marriage, he would only have been a king by courtesy. Neither," adds his historian, "wanted there even at that time secret rumours and whisperings,-which afterwards gathered strength and turned to great troubles-that the two young sons of king Edward IV., or one of them, which sons were said to be destroyed in the Tower, were not indeed murthered, but were conveyed secretly away, and were yet living: which, if it had been true, had prevented the title of the lady Elizabeth." + As to his own title, as the representative of the house of Lancaster, "he knew it was a title condemned by parliament, and generally prejudged in the common opinion of the realm." As to the third title, that of conqueror, he felt that it would provoke terror, and that even William I. forbore to use that claim in the beginning. He put on the name and state of a king, therefore, without proclaiming any title, in the first instance; and thus, the needy adventurer of August, 1485, was crowned king of England and France, on the 30th of October. But a parliament being held on the 7th of November, when the speaker was presented to the king,-who had received his crown on the battlefield, from his Norman vagabonds, as Comines describes his soldiers, and from the deserters of Richard, as though he had been elected by the voice of the people," he spoke of his accession, "as well by just hereditary title as by the sure judgment of God, which was manifested by giving him the victory in the field over his enemy." § But the parliament would not accept the vain pretension of an hereditary title, nor the insolent one of a title by conquest. The desire for tranquillity and a peaceful succession was paramount; and a title was made for Henry VII. as king de facto. By the Act of Settlement it is ordained, "in avoiding all ambiguities and questions, that the inheritance of the crowns of the realms of England and of France," &c., shall “be, rest, remain, and abide, in the most royal person of our now sovereign lord king Henry VII., and in the heirs of his body, lawfully coming, perpetually, with the grace of God so to endure, and in none other." ||

Sir N. H. Nicolas, "Memoirs of Elizabeth of York," p. lxiii. +"History of Henry VII.," p. 4.

Ibid.

Statutes, by Authority, vol. ii. p. 499.

VOL. II.

§ Rolls of Parliament.

P

210

MARRIAGE WITH ELIZABETH OF YORK.

[1486. The parliament, however, would not bestow the crown upon this branch of the house of Lancaster without a regard to the condition which was likely to prevent future disputes. Before its prorogation in December, the speaker of the Commons prayed the king, "that in consideration of the right to the realms of England and France being vested in his person and the heirs of his body, by the authority of the said parliament, he would be pleased to espouse the lady Elizabeth, daughter of king Edward IV., which marriage they hoped God would bless with a progeny of the race of kings." The Lords rose, and bowing to the throne, intimated that they assented to this desire.

Henry expressed his willingness to comply with the request; and the marriage took place on the following 18th of January. In consequence of their relationship, a dispensation was necessary; but it appears that no efforts had been made to obtain it, until after this parliamentary declaration.

The mode in which the question of Henry's title was determined by the parliament is some evidence that the ancient spirit of the great council of the realm was not extinct. The Lords and Commons would not allow themselves to be considered the representatives of a conquered people; nor would they admit a claim of lineal descent which would be resisted by a powerful party, if not by a majority of the nation. The accident, for it was scarcely more, of the victory of Bosworth Field, had left the way clear for the adherents of

1486.]

HENRY VII. SUITED TO HIS TIMES.

211

the house of Lancaster to regain their lost position; and a qualified submission to the favoured of fortune was the most prudent and honest course. There could have been no enthusiasm for the personal qualities of Henry; which were not of a nature to command the admiration of an age in which the military virtues were still held as the proudest adornment of a ruler of men. The new king was essentially different in character from any one of the Plantagenet race. He was not intellectually weak, as Henry VI.; nor incapable of self-government, as Edward II. and Richard II. But he had none of the heroic qualities-the thirst for glory, the pride, the high courage, the resolute will, which were the attributes of the first, the third, and the fourth Edward of Henry IV. and Henry V.-of Richard III. The spirit of the feudal ages had no longer a representative. But Henry VII. brought to the throne a character which was eminently fitted to the requirements of a new state of society. The work which he had to carry forward had been partially accomplished in the wars of York and Lancaster, by the outpouring of the blood, the waste of the resources, the attainders and forfeitures of the dominant nobility. The new king was to build up the monarchy upon the complete subjection of the aristocracy as a caste separate from the people; and he was to do this, not by force but by sagacity-not by terror but by subtlety-not by lavish expenditure but by ever-grasping acquisition. If this first sovereign of the house of Tudor had carried forward his policy, which was essentially arbitrary, amongst a people without that reverence for ancestral freedom which was almost an instinct, he and his successors might have established a despotism as severe as that which in some other European countries followed a similar triumph of the regal prerogative. But Henry VII., --although indifferent enough to the rights of the people, and always ready to increase his hoarded riches by cunning extortion rather than by parliamentary taxation,―preserved the country in order and tranquillity; and thus the practical liberties of the people were constantly advancing with their industrial prosperity. We shall have occasion to relate a succession of attempts to disturb the rule of this king; but the indifference with which the bulk of the English community regarded them is the best proof that the policy of this man was fitted for his time. The period of Henry VII. was that of the invention of printing, and the discovery of America. The spread of knowledge and the extension of commerce were soon to work mighty changes in all nations; and England was in a great degree fortunate to have passed under the rule of a king who would not retard the progress of improvement by clinging to the worn-out systems of the middle ages.

The desire for the union of the houses of York and Lancaster was a popular sentiment to which Henry gave little encouragement when he had the reins of power in his hands. "His aversion to the house of York was so predominant in him," says Bacon, " as it found place, not only in his wars and councils, but in his chamber and bed."* He had sworn at Vannes to marry Elizabeth of York; but he showed no alacrity in performing his oath. Although the marriage was solemnised in January 1486, the public honour of the queen's coronation was deferred till late in the year 1487. The chief adherents of Richard III. had been attainted, in the usual course of such

"History of Henry VII.,'
P. 16.

212

IMPOSTURE OF LAMBERT SIMNEL.

[1487. revolutions. But Henry also held the property of a great body of Yorkists within his grasp, by revoking, on his own authority, all grants of the crown made since 1454-5, when the influence of Richard, duke of York, began to preponderate. There was one representative of that house, whom he held int dread, even in the moment of his victory at Bosworth. Edward, earl of Warwick, the son of the duke of Clarence, had been placed by Edward IV. at the castle of Sheriff Hutton, from the time of his father's death in 1478. The young prince remained there during the reign of Richard III. The first exercise of authority by Henry was to remove the earl of Warwick to the Tower, out of whose dreary walls he never passed. The temper of the king towards the Yorkists produced an injudicious rising in 1486, under lord Lovel and Thomas and Humphrey Stafford. This was soon quelled. In Ireland, the partisans of the house of York had filled the chief offices, under the earls of Kildare, since the accession of Edward IV. The love for that house was still the prevailing feeling; and, in reliance upon this fidelity, two remarkable attempts to shake the power of Henry VII. had their first manifestations in Ireland.

Henry, after the insurgents under Lovel and the Staffords had dispersed, continued his progress through the midland and northern counties. The queen remained at Winchester. Here, in September, she gave birth to a son, who received the name of Arthur. The partisans of the house of York chose this period for the development of a plot, apparently most wild and purposeless, founded upon a reliance upon popular credulity almost beyond belief. In the spring of 1487 a youth appeared in Ireland, calling himself Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick. The son of Clarence when committed

to the Tower was about fifteen years of age. The youth who presented himself to the earl of Kildare, the lord deputy, at Dublin, was accompanied by a priest of the name of Simons, and he represented himself as the earl of Warwick, who had escaped from his confinement in the Tower. Either his pretensions were implicitly believed by Kildare, or he was a party to the scheme, which had evidently been promoted by persons of influence. In a letter written by king Henry, four years after, he says, "not forgetting the great malice that the lady Margaret of Burgoigne beareth continually against us; as she shewed lately in sending hither of a feigned boy, surmising him to have been the son of the duke of Clarence, and caused him to be accompanied with the earl of Lincoln, the lord Lovel, and with a great multitude of Irishmen and of Almains."* The hostility of Margaret of Burgundy to Richmond, the husband of her niece, was possibly the result of his neglect of that niece, and of his general oppression of the Yorkists. But her countenance of an imposture, which could be so readily exposed by producing the real son of Clarence, who was well known, and the subsequent adherence of persons of high position to the conspiracy, can scarcely be explained upon any rational principles of human conduct, except we believe that the pretended earl of Warwick was set up as a feeler of public opinion. Bacon, speaking of Margaret of Burgundy, says, "it was not her meaning, nor no more was it the meaning of any of the better and sager sort that favoured this enterprise and knew the secret, that this disguised idol should possess

Ellis, "Original Letters," Series I., vol. i. p. 19.