Henry VII
Page 3
3 G. W. Bernard, ‘The fortunes of the Greys, earls of Kent, in the early sixteenth century’, Historical Journal, XXV (1982), 671–85; D. Luckett, ‘The rise and fall of a noble dynasty: Henry VII and the Lords Willoughby de Broke’, Historical Research, LXIX (1996), 254–65: sees Robert (d. 1521), second Lord Willoughby de Broke, as damaged by unjustified financial exactions - ‘a clear and deliberate policy of forcing Robert II into an increasingly awkward financial position’. But Luckett at once concedes that the penalties may have been the consequence of his own propensity to use excessive force to solve private disputes.
1 G. W. Bernard, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), op. cit. 1–48.
2 H. M Colvin, History of the King’s Works, III, 1485–1660 (Part I) (London, 1975), 1, 187–222; A. Goodman, ‘Henry VII and Christian renewal’, Studies in Church History, XVII (1981), 115–25.
3 See for example P. I. Kaufman, ‘Henry VII and sanctuary’, Church History, LIII (1984), 465–76.
4 See now S. Clark, ‘Bacon’s Henry VII: a case study in the science of man’, History and Theory, XIII (1974), 97–118. The most recent edition is B. Vickers, Francis Bacon’s ‘Historie of the raigne of King Henry the Seventh’ (Cambridge, 1998), interesting on Bacon’s intellectual context but weak on recent writing on the reign of Henry VII.
5 S. Anglo, ‘Ill of the dead: the posthumous reputation of Henry VII’, Renaissance Studies, I (1987), 27–47.
1 Anglo, ‘Posthumous reputation of Henry VII’, op. cit. 46. Synoptic surveys, none of them full-length, include R. Lockyer and A. Thrush, Henry VII, 3rd ed. (London, 1997), A. Grant, Henry VII (London, 1985), A. Goodman, The New Monarchy. England 1471–1534 (Oxford, 1988), and S. J. Gunn, ‘Henry VII’, New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, forthcoming).
2 Elton, review, op. cit. 627.
PREFACE
This book is not to be regarded as primarily a biography since little evidence exists for the more personal and intimate side of Henry’s life, half of which was spent in more or less obscure circumstances before he became king. Very few letters of a personal as distinct from a formal or official nature survive; direct reports of his spoken words are scarce; descriptions of him by contemporaries are brief and scanty. The greater part of our views about him must be formed by inferences from what he did as king and what was done by others in his name or with his countenance.
Nor is this book intended to be a history of England during his reign. It might perhaps best be described as a study of the impact of Henry Tudor upon the government of England. It seeks to analyse and assess Henry’s actions and policies as king, as the man in whom supreme executive power, and therefore ultimate responsibility, was vested.
For some three hundred years the common understanding of Henry VII’s reign was almost wholly derived from Francis Bacon’s classic History of the reign of King Henry VII, which appeared in 1622. Historians continued to be profoundly influenced by what Bacon had written until far into the present century. This is not surprising, for there was no other study of comparable magnitude until the late nineteenth century. Bacon’s powerful intellect and seductive prose style commended his work to generations of his readers. But it was far from being, as some students seem to have assumed, a primary source. Its splendidly-turned phrases and striking appraisals were no substitute for research. The delusion that Bacon had said all that need be said about Henry VII was shattered by a distinguished German scholar, Wilhelm Busch, as long ago as 1892, whose volume on King Henry VII was published in English three years later. Busch’s work carried forward the formidable task of subjecting the materials for the reign as a whole to the scrutiny of critical his-torical scholarship, and brought into account far more material than Bacon used or knew existed. Busch’s work was recommended to English readers by James Gairdner, whose indefatigable labours as editor of records had helped to make it possible, but whose valuable even if tentative and concise study of Henry VII published in 1889 was thereby largely superseded.
In the twentieth century, especially during the last few decades, great advances have been made in our knowledge of the administrative, parliamentary, and financial history of the second half of the fifteenth century, and it has become possible to give a greater measure of realism to our understanding of Henry VII’s reign than would have seemed feasible fifty years ago. Many scholars have contributed to this advance. It would be invidious to single out individuals here, but all of them, I hope, figure in the footnotes and bibliographical list below.
There remain many dark places in our knowledge of the realities of Henry VII’s regime. Much that we should like to know we shall never know, for lack of evidence. But there are still masses of record material in the Public Record Office and elsewhere that have not even begun to be studied. Much arduous research will be needed, as well as further detailed study of known material, before we can hope to be as well informed as we might be.
The present work therefore is to be regarded as a report—an interim report—on the existing state of knowledge on these matters. I have sought to put the materials available in print into perspective whilst maintaining, I hope, a due sense of proportion. It may seem to some readers that in places too little or too much has been presented. Certainly I have tried to omit trivialities, points of merely antiquarian interest, and hackneyed anecdotes. But elsewhere I have not hesitated to supply more detail than has commonly been done. Thus, to take one example, it seems to me to be futile to try to assess the importance or otherwise of the parliamentary legislation of the reign by mentioning only the very few well-known enactments without specifically mentioning the far more numerous items of less significance. The risk of tediousness in such a procedure is less than the risk of misrepresentation. Similarly, some detail is necessary in considering finance, a vital theme that cannot be understood in generalities alone. Nor have I thought it wise to interlard my chapters with premature characterizations of the monarch himself. I have preferred to analyse what he did before trying to estimate what manner of man he was, a theme mainly reserved for the Epilogue.
My greatest debt is to those whose works I cite. I owe much to the resources of the Library of University College, Cardiff, and the patient indulgence of many members of its staff. I am grateful to the General Editor of the English Monarchs series, Professor David Douglas, for his initial encouragement and interest. I cordially acknowledge more than common indebtedness to the members of the staff of Eyre Methuen, especially to Miss M. I. Weir for her expertise as copy editor and to Miss Ann Mansbridge for her zeal in the collection of illustrations, as well as to many nameless ones without whom no book can be produced.
S. B. CHRIMES
University College,
Cardiff
July 1972
ABBREVIATIONS
Arch. Comb.
Archaeologia Cambrensis
B.I.H.R.
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research
Bull. J.R.L.
Bulletin of John Rylands Library
C.C.R.
Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VII, I, 1485–1500; II, 1500–9
Cal. Papal Reg.
Entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, XIV, 1484–92, ed. J. A. Twemlow
C.P.R.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII, I, 1485–94; II, 1494–1509
Cal. S.P. Spanish
Calendar of state papers, etc. relating to negotiations between England and Spain, ed. G. A. Bergenroth, I, 1485–1509
Cal. S.P. Venetian
Calendar of state papers relating to English affairs, in the archives of Venice, etc., I, 1202–1509, ed. R. Brown
D.N.B.
Dictionary of national biography
E.E.T.S.
Early English Text Society
E.H.R.
English Historical Review
Foedera
Foedera, conventiones, litterae, etc., ed. T. Rymer, ed. of 1704–35
G.E.C.
The comp
lete peerage, G. E. Cokayne, rev. ed.
H.J.
Historical Journal
J. Eccles. Hist.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
L. & P.
Letters and papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII ed. J. Gairdner, 2 vols (Rolls Series)
L.Q.R.
Law Quarterly Review
Materials
Materials for a history of the reign of Henry VII, ed. W. Campbell, 2 vols (Rolls Series)
Memorials
Memorials of King Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner (Rolls Series)
P.V.
Polydore Vergil, Anglica historia, ed. D. Hay (Camden Society), 3rd ser., LXXIV; or ed. H. Ellis, old ser., XXIX
R.P.
Rotuli parliamentorum
S.R.
Statutes of the realm (Record Commission)
S.S.
Seiden Society
T.R.H.S.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
W.H.R.
Welsh History Review
Y.B.
Year Books, or Les reports des cases, ed. of 1679
PART I
The Establishment of the Dynasty
Chapter 1
TO THE BATTLE OF BOSWORTH
The Welshness of Henry Tudor can easily be, and often is, exaggerated. His father, Edmund of Hadham, earl of Richmond, was by descent French and Welsh; his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was English; his grandfather Owen Tudor was indeed wholly Welsh, but his grandmother Catherine of Valois was partly French and partly Bavarian in ancestry. It is true that Henry was brought up for the first fourteen years of his life (1457 to 1471) in Wales and during these years may not have even visited England more than once at most. But there is no evidence one way or the other that he ever spoke or understood Welsh, and the next fourteen years before he came to the throne he spent for the most part in Brittany and for a short time at the end in France. He owed much, perhaps everything, in his final progress towards Bosworth, to either Welsh support or at least Welsh abstention from opposition in the crucial days of August 1485. He could and did make some political capital out of his Welsh ancestry, and on occasion flaunted the red dragon banner of Cadwallader, used the red dragon along with his favoured white greyhound as the supporters of his royal shield of arms, and appointed a Rouge Dragon pursuivant; but there is no evidence that he regarded himself as primarily a Welshman or did very much for Wales after he had ascended the throne of England. His partial Welsh descent could not, of course, in any event lend strength to his actual claim to the throne, which, in so far as it depended upon hereditary questions, rested entirely upon his descent from Edward III through the Beauforts and their progenitor John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster.
But to contemporary Welsh bards and prophets, Henry did, naturally, appear to be the new Messiah. The bardic hopes and visions which had at one time been inspired, on the basis of the Mortimer connection, firstly by Richard, duke of York, and then by Edward IV, could be more positively transferred to and focused upon the descendants of Owen ap Meredith ap Tudor; at first, but not for long, upon Edmund, earl of Richmond, then upon his brother Jasper, earl of Pembroke, and finally with more promising prospects, upon the former’s son and the latter’s nephew, Henry Tudor.1
Henry was first and foremost a statecraftsman, who was prepared to use any material or sentiments that might strengthen his own position as king. Among these materials was his Welsh descent, and this was used to harness the sentiments of Wales, but could hardly at any time have enhanced his prestige among the English. Nor is there any evidence that he took any very keen interest in his own Welsh ancestry. It is probably a delusion to suppose that after his accession he appointed a commission to enquire into his lineage.1 The fact was that his Welsh ancestry, though no doubt endearing him to Welsh supporters, was not such that he could afford as king to boast about. Whatever his remoter Welsh forbears may have been (and there is no reason to suppose that they were in any way remarkable), his more immediate ancestors had ruined themselves by throwing in their lot with Owain Glyndŵr, whose prolonged and disastrous rebellion against the first of the Lancastrian kings could hardly be brought into the limelight by one whose sole hope of attaining to the Crown depended upon his claim to be the rightful heir of the House of Lancaster itself.
In the first half of the thirteenth century, Henry’s forbears had been reasonably prosperous.2 The most important of them, Ednyfed Fychan, had been seneschal of Gwynedd, and before his death in 1246 had served both Llewylyn the Great and his son David, and received substantial grants in Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and the future Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. His sons Goronwy and Tudur maintained the family position into the fourteenth century, mainly by supporting the Crown; and the great-grandson and heir of the former, Tudur ap Goronwy, continued the process. But his five sons were first cousins of Owain Glyndŵr himself, and this circumstance proved to be the source of calamity to the family. Three of these sons are known to have been at one time in the service of Richard II, and this fact, as well as their kinship, may have induced the surviving brothers to have sided with Glyndŵr against Richard II’s displacer, Henry IV. The consequence in due course was execution for one of the brothers, and the forfeiture of all the lands of the survivors. The heir of the eldest of them, Goronwy, eventually recovered the Penmynydd estates, but his family, the senior line, fell into complete obscurity in the following centuries, a position from which they were in no way rescued by their eventually royal kinsman. Obscurity in his own lifetime seems likewise to have been the fate of the youngest of the brothers, Meredith (Maredudd), and would doubtless have been the fate of the whole family, but for the activities of his son Owen, who, like the young sons of some of the other rebels, was provided for by Henry V, and was taken as a page in or near his own household. Little, indeed, could Henry V have imagined that this Owen ap Meredith ap Tudor would in later years be taken in marriage by his own widow Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France and of Queen Isabella (Wittelsbach), and that their grandson would become Henry VII of England.1
How and when the first moves were made which led on to this extraordinary turn of events remain unknown. Owen’s career in the royal entourage is shrouded in obscurity. There is no evidence that he was at Agincourt, or ever knighted.2 He is said to have become a member of the retinue of Sir Walter Hungerford in France in 1420,3 and this may have been a circumstance of crucial importance in the long run. Presumably, Owen was as yet too young to have done more than participate in a very modest capacity in the life of the court. Henry V married Catherine of Valois, then aged nearly nineteen years, on 2 June 1420. By 1 September 1422 she had become a widow. In the government of England during the minority of her son Henry VI, born on 21 December 1421, she was to have no part, and very little share in the upbringing of her son.4
Nothing at all is known for certain, although there are many legends, about the process whereby Owen came into the service and intimate favour of the Queen Dowager. But Sir Walter Hungerford, later first Baron Hungerford, was one of the executors of Henry V’s will, a councillor, and from 1424 to 1426 steward of Henry VI’s Household,1 and it may well be that the Hungerford connection, if there was one, was the channel through which Owen was brought to Catherine’s notice. Nor is there any valid evidence as to what happened between Catherine and Owen, except that at some stage they were canonically married and begot at least three sons and one daughter, whose legitimacy was never contested at the time.2 There is likewise no evidence that anyone outside their own immediate circle knew of these facts until just before or after Catherine’s death on 3 January 1437. Whether or not the grant to Owen in 1432 of substantial exemption from the restrictions placed on Welshmen by statute (2 Henry IV) had any connection with his marriage with Catherine, must remain a matter of surmise since we do not know the date of that event. It is quite probable that this grant (which other Welshmen had obtained) would have been secured before he ventured up
on matrimony with the Queen Dowager, but at any rate, from 1432 onwards Owen was officially regarded ‘sicut verus anglicus ligeus’ (‘as if he were a true English subject’), and was legally restrained only from becoming a citizen or burgess of a city or borough or an officer or minister of the king in any city, borough, or market town.3
There is no reason to doubt that Catherine and Owen were lawfully married, that is, canonically by a priest. The law of matrimony was, of course, wholly a matter for the Church, and we may well doubt whether an act of parliament, if there had been a relevant one, could have prevented or defeated a marriage canonically sanctioned, though such an act might impose penalties on the parties. The allegation that an act was passed in 1428 or 1430 expressly to prohibit marriage with the Queen Dowager, has been shown to be false.4 It is true that an ordinance1 was promulgated by the Prince of Wales’s Council at Chester early in the century as part of the ‘penal laws’ against Welshmen, purporting to forbid marriage between Welsh and English persons, but it can hardly be supposed, even if this ordinance had any relevance to the case, that Catherine of Valois could have been deemed an English woman for this purpose, if indeed such an ordinance could be applied to the Queen Dowager at all, and in any event Owen’s grant of 1432 certainly took him out of any such restriction. It may well have been, however, that in marrying the Queen Dowager without the king’s consent, Owen violated the normal usages of feudal society and exposed himself to the possibility of a substantial financial penalty, though Catherine could scarcely have been considered an heiress in the usual feudal sense of the term. But at the time whenever exactly the wedding was, Henry VI could not have been more than a young boy, and even the most austere upholders of social conventions could hardly have expected a royal mother, in the circumstances, to have asked permission from her own boy-son to contract a mésalliance; furthermore, Owen himself would not have had sufficient resources of his own to pay any considerable fine. The king’s displeasure was about the worst that he need expect when the facts became known, at any rate from such a generally benign monarch as Henry VI, and displeasure was what he received. When Henry VI learnt of the marriage, probably just before his mother’s death on 3 January 1437, he himself was sixteen years of age, and the protectorate had lapsed for some six years. As he was to be declared of full age within a year, he could scarcely have been very pleased at the news. It took even his benevolent and charitable disposition some years to extend much favour to his half-brothers or any favour to their father Owen.