Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  The maintenance of the public peace and the enforcement of law and order were inevitably matters of great concern to the poachers now turned gamekeepers, and a special effort was made in the parliament to remind all concerned of their duties in this matter. All the justices assembled at the Blackfriars to consider the king’s business against the opening of parliament, could think of many statutes profitable to the realm, if they could be enforced. But the question was, how were they to be enforced?3 In the parliament, the only method that could be thought of was to exact an oath couched in very detailed terms from the knights and squires of the royal household, the men de Domo Communitatis (of the House of the Community), and all the lords spiritual and temporal.

  Ye shall swere that yee from henceforth shall not receive, aid ne comforte, any persoune openlie cursed Murderer, Felon, or outlawed Man of felony, by you knowen so to be, or any such persoune lett to be attached or taken therefore by the order of Law, nor reteine anie Man by Indenture or othe, nor give Livere, Signe, or token, contraire to the law, nor any Maintenance, Imbracerie, Riotts or unlawfull Assemblie make, cause to be made, or assent thereto, nor lett nor cause to be letted the execucion of any of the King’s writts or precepts, directed to such lawfull Ministres and Officers, as ought to have execucion of the same, nor lett any Man to Baile or Mainprise, knowing and deeming him to be a Felon, upon Your Honour and Worship. So God you helpe and hys Seints.4

  This done, and re-enforced at the end of the session by an exhortation by the chancellor to the lords and commons, especially to those who were justices of the peace,1 little remained before prorogation on 10 December but for the commons, through the speaker, to beseech the king to marry Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, a request which, supported by lords spiritual and temporal standing in their places, the king in person expressed himself happy to accede to.2 Before the prorogation was over on 23 January 1486, Henry would, in fact, have carried his intention into effect.

  Historians have often sought to make much of the fact that the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth of York, which he had solemnly promised to perform at the meeting in Rennes Cathedral on Christmas day, 1483, did not occur until some four months after Bosworth. Much play has been made of the idea that there was some profound political motive for getting himself crowned and his title declared in parliament before he entered into a matrimonial union with the Yorkist house. But it is difficult to see how he could possibly have proceeded in any other way. He was necessarily obliged to ascend the throne on the merits of his own claims, to which marriage with Elizabeth could add nothing. It was only their heirs who could obtain a strengthening of their title from adding the Yorkist to the Lancastrian strain of descent. Henry must become king and attend to the urgent business of the new regime before he could possibly spare time and energy for marriage. Besides, there were other considerations, some of them awkward ones, to be dealt with, before the point of actual marriage could be reached. For one thing, it is a tolerable certainty that at 22 August 1485 he had never set eyes on his intended bride, certainly not for fourteen years, even if he had caught a glimpse of her during the Readeption of 1470–1, which is hardly likely since Elizabeth, at that time four or five years of age, was in sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with her mother. Even Henry could hardly have plunged into matrimony with a total stranger. He must have time for making the lady’s acquaintance, and opportunity for a little wooing. Unfortunately there is no evidence of this process, but it must surely have occurred. In any event, there were two serious obstacles to the wedding, which had to be got over before it could be celebrated. At the time of Henry’s arrival in England, Elizabeth was, by the law of the land, stigmatized as a bastard, and it would not have done for Henry to marry a person ofthat status. Furthermore, the parties were related in the fourth degree of kinship and perhaps in the fourth degree of affinity, and could not be married without dispensation. To overcome these obstacles took time, and, on the whole, things moved fast to enable the marriage to take place on 18 January 1486.

  The first of these difficulties was a very delicate matter indeed, for the subject-matter of the act of Richard III’s parliament had now become so scandalous to think of that all the justices in the Exchequer chamber advised that it would be best to avoid rehearsing the actual words in the act of Henry’s parliament designed to nullify it.1 Nullified, however, it was,2 without being too specific about its contents, and until this was done, the legitimacy of Elizabeth remained questionable.

  It still remained to go through the elaborate procedure to obtain dispensation for the marriage to be unequivocably canonical. To wait for the papal court itself to make the decree would have been to delay the wedding unduly, and even as it was the services of the apostolic delegate to England and Scotland, James, bishop of Imola, in the matter did not produce a faculty of dispensation in proper form, after due consideration of the testimony of eight witnesses, until 16 January.3 Two days later the wedding took place, but the papal confirmation of the decree was dated 2 March. When confirmation did come, however, it was worth having, for it not only ratified all that had been done in the matter, but also threatened excommunication to all who should rebel against Henry VII and his heirs.4

  Little is known of the marriage itself, except that Archbishop Thomas Bourchier is said to have performed the ceremony,5 which was certainly made an occasion for celebration by the panegyrists and chroniclers, contemporary and later,6 as well it might, for at last the union of the two houses of Lancaster and York had occurred, even though, as time showed, not all parties and persons were disposed to acquiesce in the turn of events.

  There remained to stage a coronation for the new queen. But that was not to be until after the birth of a son and heir, nor until after the first major trial of strength with the Yorkist malcontents. Prince Arthur was born on 19 September 1486, and the battle of Stoke was fought on 16 June 1487. On 10 November a commission was issued to Jasper, duke of Bedford, John, earl of Oxford, and Thomas, earl of Derby, William, earl of Nottingham, and three others, to discharge the office of steward of England at the coronation of Elizabeth the queen consort,1 which took place on 25 November.2 The dynasty was established, but with what measure of security time alone would prove. Many years would pass before even the first Tudor sovereign could feel that the ghost of York was laid, and although his union with Elizabeth was to produce eight offspring, the rate of mortality among them was destined to be very disquieting.3 Of the three sons (Arthur, Henry, and Edmund) who survived long enough to have any name known to us, only one (Henry) was still alive at the end of April 1502, and only two of the daughters (Margaret and Mary) survived to maturity. For Henry VII, therefore, the problem of security for the dynasty which he had founded remained the fundamental problem which he must solve at all costs. But to obtain security proved far more difficult than could be imagined in 1485.

  1 See above, p. 39; also printed in J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Letters, I, 161–2.

  2 See below, p. 63.

  3 Thus, A. F. Pollard, ‘The “de facto” act of Henry VII’, B.I.H.R., VII (1929), 3, was not justified in asserting that the common statement that Henry dated his reign and regnal years from 21 August instead of 22 August is not substantiated.

  4 The main points for consideration were outlined in Chrimes, English constitutional ideas in the fifteenth century (1936), 32–4, and references therein.

  5 The reference to this subject in the continuation of the Croyland chronicle (ed. Riley), 512, suggesting diversity of opinion, is hard to understand, because the allusions therein do not accord with the wording of the act of parliament setting out the king’s title in most terse and guarded language.

  1 See below, p. 62.

  2 A copy survives in the MS. archives of York, printed by J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, Letters, I (1846), 169–70.

  3 P.V. (ed. Hay), 2.

  1 Materials, I, 4–6; and generally, Anglo, Guildhall Miscellanea, II (1960), 3–11.

  2 Edward IV had similarly deposited his ban
ners after Barnet in 1471. Great chronicle, 217, cited Anglo, loc. cit. 4.

  3 Sir Reginald Bray spent £336 18s 4d on clothing materials which were delivered to the king, partly for Henry himself and partly for servants, as early as 30 August. John English, king’s servant, spent a further £21 3s 7d for clothing for other servants, including himself, Materials, I, 78–183.

  1 ibid. I, 6.

  1 The names of some forty persons, mostly of yeoman status, who received grants or favours of one kind or another on these grounds, starting from as early as 18 September 1485, can be listed from Materials, I, passim, 8–357. Additional names can be obtained from C.P.R., Henry VII, I. The villages of Widerley, Aterton, Feny Drayton, Manseter, and Atherstone, which had suffered losses of corn and grain at the hands of Henry’s followers before Bosworth, received £72 2s 4d compensation (25 November 1485), Materials, 188.

  2 ibid. I, 102. The letters patent were couched in particularly warm terms.

  3 G.E.C., sub.-tit. Bedford. Catherine was allowed 1,000 marks per annum out of the estate of her late husband as recompense for all dower (Materials, 117–18&rpar. Jasper had an illegitimate daughter, Helen, who married William Gardiner, citizen of London, who became the parents of Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

  4 Materials, I, 215.

  5 ibid. I, 220; Materials, 394.

  6 ibid. 334.

  7 ibid. 459.

  8 ibid. 121.

  9 For two years, and thereafter at pleasure, in as full manner as the late George,duke of Clarence held the office. Appointments to archbishoprics and bishoprics, and to the offices of chancellor, treasurer, and the chief justiceships were reserved to the Crown, ibid. 384; cf. Roger S. Thomas, op. cit., passim.

  10 R.P., VI, 278.

  1 Materials, 23, 31, 38.

  2 e.g. ibid. 33, 211, 213. Sir James Blunt, who had come over to Henry with the earl of Oxford, was restored to the lieutenancy of Hammes Castle (ibid. 368), and was granted the stewardship of the honour of Tutbury (ibid. 551).

  3 ibid. 76.

  4 ibid. 241.

  5 ibid. 345.

  6 ibid. 574.

  7 ibid. 76, etc.

  8 See below, p. 57.

  9 Materials, 41.

  10 ibid. 258.

  11 ibid. 271.

  12 ibid. 9, 81.

  13 ibid. 100.

  14 So created, 6 January 1486 (ibid. I, 246; II, 152), with 100 marks a year; see above, p. 40.

  15 Materials, I, 227, 494. Early in 1486 he appears to have been reckoned one of the ambassadors from France, whose expenses in England were reimbursed (ibid. II, 103, 104, 105).

  16 ibid. I, 19.

  17 e.g. office of escheator and feodary of the duchy of Cornwall and constable of Launceston Castle (Materials, 1, 18, 290) ; steward of the earldom of March (ibid. 79) ; comptroller of the king’s Household (ibid. 195); see also ibid. 448, 451.

  1 ibid. 10.

  2 ibid. 68.

  3 ibid. 40, 66; constable of Southampton Castle, 344.

  4 ibid. II, 194.

  5 ibid. I, 83.

  6 ibid. 361.

  7 ibid. 385.

  8 With the same authority and power as wardens had in the reign of Richard II and the three Lancastrian kings, 3 January 1486 (ibid. 242). On the significance of this passing over of Yorkist practice, see below, p. 98.

  9 ibid. 109.

  10 ibid. 105. On the whole subject, see J. M. Lloyd, ‘The rise and fall of the House of Dinefwr (the Rhys family) 1430–1530’, unpublished M.A. thesis (University of Wales, Cardiff, 1963).

  11 His patent was dated 14 July 1486 (Materials, I, 499), but he probably acted as such before the parliament of 1485.

  12 ibid. 84; Lovell became speaker in the parliament of 1485; see below, p. 111.

  13 ibid. 549. Many offices, especially connected with finance and estate management, were granted in due course to Bray, including that of steward and surveyor of all the possessions of the late Henry, duke of Buckingham, during the minority of his son and heir Edward, so long as in the hands of the Crown (ibid. 212).

  14 ibid. 154.

  1 ibid. 275; 3 September 1485, Urswick was granted in augmentation of the king’s alms, all the goods and chattels of felons and all deodands falling to the Crown. He was appointed master of King’s Hall, Cambridge (ibid. 71, 184), to various prefer ments (C.P.R., I, 154, 170, 339, 472), and became, before December 1485, dean of York &lparMaterials, II, 377).

  2 Among numerous grants and favours shown to Margaret Beaufort, now countess of Derby as well as of Richmond, the most notable were the grant to her of the marriage and wardship of Edward, son and heir of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and his brother Henry (R.P., VI, 285–6; and C.P.R., I, 113); and the grant for life of a very large number of manors and lordships (ibid. 154). She signed herself as Margaret R[ichmond]. (Pollard, Henry VII, 1, 218.)

  3 On Monday, 6 March 1486 the king, in the presence of Peter, bishop of Exeter, Jasper, duke of Bedford, Christopher Urswick, and others, delivered the Great Seal to John Morton, bishop of Ely, and appointed him chancellor (C.P.R., I, 360). The assignment of this transaction to the year 1487 in some reference books is an unfortunate error. The congé d’élire to the prior and chapter of Canterbury was dated 8 June 1486 and Morton was translated to Canterbury on 6 October 1486.

  4 Nor did Henry ignore what were soon to be his Woodville relatives, Edward Woodville, and Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, who along with the fellow pledge, John Bourchier, left behind in France, were shown some favour. One would like to know what lay behind Henry’s grant dated 26 February 1486 of special protection and safeguard to Anne Devereux, countess of Pembroke, the widow of his former guardian William Herbert, who at the command of the king and for no other reason, came out of Wales to London (Materials, I, 320). The grant of the earldom of Huntingdon to her son William, made in exchange for the earldom of Pembroke by Edward IV in 1479, was confirmed on 17 May 1488 (C.P.R., I, 137). The earldom of Pembroke was to be restored to a grandson of Earl William Herbert (d. 1469) in 1551.

  1 Materials, I, 92; C.P.R., I, 46.

  2 The very detailed and illuminating account surviving fills twenty-eight pages in Materials, II, 2–29. It is not possible to state the modern value of the money of Henry VII’s time. A basis for comparison can be obtained by noting the prices paid in this and other accounts. Thus, for example, Willoughby paid 13s 4d for the king’s gilt spurs; 8s for a sword with a point; 6d for 1,000 small nails. The wages for the tailors employed in the Great Wardrobe were 6d per day.

  1 The account of Alvered Corneburgh, keeper of the Great Wardrobe, for the period 22 August 1485 to 2 February 1486, is printed, ibid. 163–80. The items include provision for the queen, and the sums involved were of the order of £1,300.

  2 The fullest account of the coronation proceedings is to be found in S. Anglo, ‘The foundation of the Tudor dynasty; the coronation and marriage of Henry VII’, Guildhall Miscellanea, II (1960), 3–11. A late sixteenth-century MS., now B.M. Egerton 985, fo. 41b–48, provides a narrative of Henry VII’s procession and coronation proceedings (ibid. 3–6); the coronation order is available in several MS. versions, cited ibid. 5, and is commented on in L. G. Wickham Legg, English coronation records (1901), 220–39; cf. P. E. Schramm, A history of the English coronation (1937). On Archbishop Bourchier, see Registrum Thome Bourgchier, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay, Cant. and York Soc., LIV (1957); cf. S. Anglo, Spectacle, pageantry and early Tudor policy (1969).

  3 The others were Edward Stafford, John Fitzwalter, Thomas Cokesge, Roger Lewkenor, Henry Haydon, and John Verney.

  1 The text of Richard III’s coronation oath, presumably the same as that taken by Henry VII, is printed in S. B. Chrimes and A. L. Brown (eds), Select documents of English constitutional history 1307–1485 (1961), 354–5.

  2 An order was made on 23 October for the payment of 100 marks to Sir Richard Guildford, who had been deputed to prepare the jousts, Materials, II, 97–8.

  3 See below, p. 156 ff.
<
br />   1 Y.B. 1 Henry VII, Mich., pl. 5; see Chrimes, op. cit. 51, 378.

  2 R.P., VI, 267–384. Extracts from the rolls are given in Materials, I, 110–37.

  3 On Thomas Lovell, see J. S. Roskell, The commons and their speakers in English parliaments, 1376–1523 (1965), 298–9, 358–9.

  1 R.P., VI, 268–70; and cf. notes on texts in S.R., II, 499.

  2 R.P., VI, 273–5, 278–86, 288, 290–1, 298, 305. No one to have any action in respect of the lands concerned until after the end of the parliament, ibid. 275. As regards Henry VI, he had been convicted and attainted of high treason and had forfeited the duchy of Lancaster, ibid. V, 478. It is not easy to reconcile this act, and the present repeal thereof, with the opinion expressed by all the justices (except Townsend) to the effect that he had not been attainted, but only disabled of his crown, kingdom, dignity, lands, and tenements, and that when he recovered the crown, all that disablement was ipso facto void. Y.B. 1 Henry VII, Mich., pi. 5, cited above.

  1 R.P., VI, 275–8. ‘Wherefore oure Soveraigne Lord, calleinge unto hys blessed remembraunce thys high and grete charge adjoyned to hys Royall Majestie and Estate, not oblivious nor puttinge out of hys godly mind the unnaturall, mischevious and grete Perjuries, Treasons, Homicides and Murdres, in shedding of Infants blood, with manie other Wronges, odious offences and abominacions ayenst God and Man, and in especiall oure Said Soveraigne Lord, committed and doone by Richard, late Duke of Gloucester. …’ Among the twenty-eight others attainted were five peers: John Howard, duke of Norfolk; his son Thomas, earl of Surrey; Francis, Viscount Lovel; Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers; and John, Lord Zouche; and eight knights, including Ratcliffe and Brackenbury; and among the other fifteen persons were William Catesby and John Kendal, who had been Richard III’s secretary.