Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  The outstanding example of Henry VII’s personal interest in these matters, however, was his intervention in the case of the trial of the Staffords for treason in 1486, which resulted in the judicial decision that the right of sanctuary should not henceforth be pleadable in treason.1

  None of these modest measures met with any opposition from the papacy. The attitude of the common law courts was clearly enough not to allow any encroachments on the law of the land by papal action, but no issues were raised such as to provoke manifest conflict or even friction. Nothing that occurred in the relation between State and Church in Henry VII’s time can be regarded as foreshadowing the shape of things to come under Henry VIII. But – and it is perhaps a fundamental point – the very full measure of control over the episcopate attained by Henry VII may have constituted a condition precedent without which his son might well have been confronted with a far greater degree of opposition from the Church than in fact he experienced when it came to the crisis. To many clergy and others it must have seemed that papal power in practice was no great thing,2 and that its abolition was not so significant as the theorists made out.

  1 See below, p. 305.

  2 R. J. Knecht (see below, p. 242, n.1), 129.

  3 See below, p. 242.

  4 See below, p. 243.

  5 J. A. F. Thomson, The later Lollards, 1414–1520 (1965), 237–8; Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 222, 327.

  1 A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (1964), 88–9.

  2 See above, p. 66. These texts (pp. 1–2, 14–26) and many documents, mostly of a routine nature, are available up to 1492 in Cal. Papal Reg., 1484–1492.

  3 F. R. H. Du Boulay, ‘The fifteenth century’, The English Church and the papacy in the Middle Ages, ed. C. H. Lawrence (1965), 195–242, esp. 220–7. Morton’s visit to the Hospice in 1484 (see above, p. 106) may have had something to do with Henry’s take-over.

  4 A. Hamilton Thompson, The English clergy and their organization in the later Middle Ages (1949), 24, 31.

  1 See generally, R.J. Knecht, ‘The episcopate and the Wars of the Roses’, Birmingham H.J., VI (1957–8), 108–31, esp. 126–31. Langton had served Edward IV in a variety of capacities and had, for example, been appointed to St David’s in 1483 and translated to Salisbury in May 1485; he was temporarily deprived of his tem poralities after Bosworth and put into Gourtenay’s custody. Before long, however, he was summoned to parliament and convocations, and promoted to Winchester in succession to Courtenay in 1493. Only his death in 1501 prevented him from moving to Canterbury. Richard Redman had been at St Asaph since 1471, and excluded from the first parliament because of his Yorkist associations, but was pardoned in February 1486, and secured translation to Exeter in 1495 and to Ely in 1501. Robert Stillington, bishop of Bath and Wells since 1466, had been keeper of the Privy Seal in 1460 and chancellor on occasions, 1467–75. Edward IV, however, had imprisoned him at one time, but Richard III favoured him, and he was arrested after Bosworth. His pardon by Henry VII did not prevent him from dabbling in treason in connection with the Simnel conspiracy, so that he was arrested again and imprisoned at Windsor, though released shortly before his death in 1491. John Shirwood, appointed to Durham in 1485 by Richard III, was not summoned to the first parliament, not because of disgrace, but because he was absent on Henry VII’s business at the Curia (loc. cit. 127–8).

  2 H. Ellis, Original letters, 2nd ser. I, 146.

  3 Edmund Audley, of Rochester (1480), Hereford (1492), and Salisbury (1502), survived until 1524.

  4 Knecht, loc. cit.

  5 Giovanne de’ Gigli (1497), followed in 1499 by his brother Silvester, cf. A. Hamilton Thompson, op. cit. 25; Du Boulay, op. cit. 222.

  1 On Henry VII and the Welsh bishoprics, see Glanmor Williams, The Welsh church from Conquest to Reformation (1962), 299–304.

  2 A. G. Dickens, op. cit. 88. The precise nature of these recognizances needs proper investigation, but there may have been an element of simony involved.

  3 cf. Pickthorn, op. cit. 175–81; A. G. Dickens, op. cit. 88–9.

  4 1 Henry VII, c. 4; S.R., II, 500.

  5 4 Henry VII, c. 5; S.R., II, 530.

  6 7 Henry VII, c. 5; S.R., II, 552.

  7 4 Henry VII, c. 13; S.R., II, 538. cf. above, p. 179. St. 7 Henry VII, c. 1, withdrew the benefit from military deserters, and 12 Henry VII, c. 7, withdrew it from laymen in cases of petty treason.

  1 See above, pp. 161 and 71, for references.

  2 These attitudes are well illustrated by the discussion by the justices in the parliament chamber in the well-known ‘alum’ case in 1486. Y.B. 1 Henry VII, Hil., pl. 10. See Pickthorn, op. cit. 181; Chrimes, op. cit. 379–80; Pollard, Henry VII, III, 154–5.

  Chapter 14

  POLICY TOWARDS WALES AND IRELAND

  (A) Wales

  Henry VII had, of course, succeeded to the throne of England without having been prince of Wales, and the princely office had suffered grievous vicissitudes since Edward I had invested his son Edward of Caernarvon in February 1301. True, the ‘Black Prince’, eldest son of Edward III, had held it for thirty-three years before his death in 1376. But the prince’s second son Richard held it only for seven months before he became king. Henry of Monmouth held it from 1399, when he was about twelve years of age, until his accession in 1413. Henry VI was briefly prince, and his ill-fated son Edward was so created at the age of about six months in 1454. The displacement of his father in 1461 nullified the effectiveness of this creation. Edward IV sought to rectify the position by creating his son Edward prince in 1471 at a similar age. His survival until 1483 offered Edward IV a few years of opportunity to give to the princely office some functions in the governmental sphere other than those envisaged in 1301. But the decease of Edward V early in the reign of Richard III and of his successor as prince by April 1484 brought another hiatus in the history of the office. Not until 29 November 1489 was Henry VII able to create his three-year-old son Arthur prince of Wales, and whatever hopes may have been founded on this revival of the office were dashed by Arthur’s death on 2 April 1502. Nearly two years elapsed before the second son Henry was elevated to the position of prince (18 February 1504), and after his accession on 22 April 1509 there was to be no subsequent prince for a century.1 Apart, therefore, from the vestment of the lands of the principality in the hands of the Crown (or prince) and the introduction into the principality of many features of the English administrative and legal system as decreed by Edward I, the governmental arrangements in Wales persisted with little change until the late fifteenth century. The principality and the marcher lordships (with many of these in the king’s hands either as king or as duke of Lancaster) remained side by side to complicate and confuse governmental questions throughout the period.

  Map 4 Lands of the Grown in Wales in the reign of Henry VII

  The fundamental nature of Edward I’s provisions for the principality of Wales, as set out in the so-called ‘statute’ of Rhuddlan or Wales of 1284, has not until recently been as clearly understood as it should. But the union of the principality with the Crown of England did not occur, as often assumed, in consequence of the act of 1536. It was achieved in fact by the ‘statute’ of 1284. Sir Goronwy Edwards in a recent study1 not as yet widely known, has made this conclusion irresistible. The words of the decree of 1284 are perfectly plain on the point. Edward I declared without ambiguity that ‘Divine providence hath now wholly and entirely transferred under our proper dominion the land of Wales with its inhabitants, heretofore subject unto us in feudal right … and hath annexed and united the same unto our Grown of the realm [of England] as a member of the same body’.2 The act of 1536, mislead-ingly called by twentieth-century historians the ‘Act of Union’, could not have created a union that had occurred in 1284, nor does the actual wording of the act, taken in its context, purport to create the union of England and Wales. ‘The unions which the Act did purport to create, and actually created, were those which merged the principality of Wales and the March of Wales
to form the twelve shires of Wales.’ The purport and effect of the act of 1536 was to unify Wales politically within itself.3

  The position in Wales when Henry VII acquired the Crown in 1485 was that the lands of the principality, with certain marcher lordships regarded as legally held thereof in chief, rested, pending the creation of a prince of Wales, in the hands of the Crown; also in the king’s hands were other lands coming to him as parts of the duchy of Lancaster and some marcher lordships which were his either by inheritance, forfeiture, or by wardship. In addition a large number of marcher lordships quite distinct from the principality remained vested in the hands of the individual lords themselves, holding as in chief their lands and rights, not of the principality or prince except in one or two instances, but of the king himself. The possibilities of improving the government of Wales that confronted Henry VII were not very great. The principality would provide a patrimony for his first-born son, and might, following Yorkist precedent, offer opportunities for administrative improvement; fortuitous circumstances might combine to make the king himself the greatest marcher lord. But the possibilities of interfering in the affairs of the other marcher lords remained slight; at best it might be feasible to try to induce the marcher lords to carry out the governmental duties, especially in the matter of enforcing law and order, which legally rested upon them. If steps in the right direction were taken, the necessary conditions precedent to the merger of the principality and the March of Wales by the Act of Union of 1536 might be established, even though such a merger can hardly have been consciously envisaged by Henry VII himself.

  At the time of Henry VII’s accession, the principality consisted of Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Flintshire, and Merioneth in the north, plus Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire in the south. In these domains the administration, following Edward I’s arrangements, was similar to that in England, with sheriffs, coroners, county and hundred courts, and in addition a justice of North Wales for Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, and Merioneth, and a justice of South Wales for the two southern shires. Flint had been brought under the county palatine of Chester, which had been in the king’s or earl’s hands for a long time, but retained its own courts of law, with a justice of Chester for Crown and Common Pleas, without justices of the peace, but with a chamberlain and other officials of its own. Glamorgan and Pembrokeshire had become Crown lordships in which the administration was on the lines of English counties, and the same general arrangements prevailed in the border shires of Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, and Shropshire. But the king’s writ did not run in the numerous marcher lordships, probably exceeding one hundred and thirty in number, which were substantially autonomous and wherein the lord was sovereign and alone responsible for the maintenance of justice and order. But twenty-two of these marcher lordships comprised the earldom of March, which had come into the hands of the Crown with the accession of the Yorkists, the heirs of the Mortimers. The earldom of Pembroke and several lordships were restored to Jasper Tudor and after his death passed to Prince Henry. The lordships of Brecon, Caurs, and Newport, all part of the Stafford family estates, had been forfeited by the attainder of Henry, duke of Buckingham, in 1483, and remained in the Crown’s hands during the minority of his heir Edward. The attainder of Sir William Stanley in 1495 brought Holt, Bromfield, Yale, and Chirk into the king’s hands. Altogether, it is calculated that some fifty marcher lordships were in Henry VII’s hands at one time or another. He was therefore in a powerful position to influence affairs not only in the principality, but also to some extent in the Marches.1

  In the principality, Henry’s first care was to appoint to the chief offices men whom he could trust or thought he could trust. Sir William Stanley, one of the most powerful marcher lords in his own right, had been appointed chief justice of North Wales by Richard III in November 1483,1 and continued in office until his own downfall in 1495. Jasper Tudor was appointed chief justice of South Wales, 13 December 1485,2 and so remained until his death also in 1495. Both of these influential men served, along with a number of others, on a commission appointed on 18 February 1486 to restore order in the earldom of March.3

  But little time was lost in resurrecting the princely office once a son was born to the king. Arthur, born 19 September 1486, was created prince of Wales and earl of Chester on 29 November 1489.4 With a titular prince, no matter how tender in age, in existence, it was possible to follow the precedents that Edward IV had set, and to establish a Prince’s Council that could exercise some degree of supervision over the principality as a whole and over the contiguous border shires. It is certain that the Prince’s Council was established shortly after his creation as prince, and that this council was functioning under the aegis of Jasper Tudor by March 1490, some ten or eleven years before Prince Arthur himself came to reside at Ludlow.5 The rapidity with which a Prince’s Council was established could hardly have been achieved without precedent, and this had been firmly set by Edward IV in 1471.6

  His son Edward had been created prince on 26 June 1471,7 when he was about eight months old, and a council enlarged to twenty-five members in February 14738 was set up to manage his domains. By November 1473 John Alcock, then bishop of Rochester, was recognized as president of this council;9 and he was associated with Anthony, Earl Rivers, in the care and upbringing of the prince. The primary task of the council was the management of the territories appertaining to the principality and of the prince’s Household, but its scope became extended rather further as time went on.10

  As early as 1474 a commission was issued to Earl Rivers and others to take steps to arrest certain persons who had failed to appear before the King’s Council, and to give assistance in the matter when required by the Prince’s Council.1 Further important steps to extend the influence of the Prince’s Council into the Marches were taken in 1476. A general commission of oyer et terminer was issued to the prince in the border counties and the Marches of Wales.2 In February another commission was issued to the prince and council to be at Ludlow in March to confer with the marcher lords (summoned separately by the king) on ways and means of doing justice in the many cases of murder and other felonies committed in Wales and the Marches, pending the arrival of the king in person later on.3 Further commissions were issued during the year which in effect extended the influence of the council into the Marches. Within a few years the Prince’s Council had become an established instrument for the supervision of justice in the Marches of Wales as well as the principality itself. After 1478, however, little is known of the activities of the council, and it may have ceased to exist with the death of Edward IV in 1483.4

  Soon after the creation of Henry VII’s son Arthur as prince of Wales and earl of Chester (29 November 1489), the Prince’s Council had been re-established, and by 1490 was functioning. By 1501 the prince himself became resident at Ludlow.

  A surviving indenture made in March 1490 between the king and Ralph Hakluyt, steward of the lordships of Clifford, Winforton, and Glasbury reveals the responsibilities which it was intended the Prince’s Council should undertake.5 The officers of the royal lordship in Wales were to be bound by indentures to suppress felonies, and the council was to ensure that these contracts were observed. All persons from the royal lordships seeking redress of grievances were to address themselves to the prince or in his absence to Jasper Tudor, or to the Prince’s Council.6 By 1493 the prince was given judicial powers similar to those which Edward IV had given to his son, with power to appoint commissions of oyer et terminer in the March shires and in the principality, powers of array, of inquiry into liberties and into the flights of criminals.7 A large number of the Crown’s marcher lordships, including the earldom of March, were transferred to the prince,8 who became in consequence ‘the greatest lord of the whole region and in a strong position to supervise justice’.9

  After the prince’s marriage in November 1501, his council was reconstituted with William Smyth, bishop of Lincoln since 1495, already a prominent figure in the council’s work, as president.1 But the d
eath of Arthur on 2 April 1502 left the council to function as best it might without a prince until the creation of the king’s son Henry as prince on 18 February 1504.2 A precedent had now been set for the existence of a council without a prince of Wales for a period of nearly two years, and it became manifest that a council for Wales might be more than a Prince’s Council, and the time would come when there was such a thing as the Council in the Marches of Wales. In the meantime the whole patrimony of the heir to the throne passed to Prince Henry in 1504 (who therefore surrendered the lands of the duchy of York and the lands in Wales granted to him on the death of Jasper Tudor in 1495), but the issues from the new prince’s domains continued to be paid into the chamber for the king’s use.3

  Some progress had thus been made in making the Prince’s Council an instrument of government in the principality, the Marches, and the Crown lordships. But none of these developments in itself affected the most intractable problem of ensuring justice within the marcher lordships. It was not possible for the king or the prince to attempt direct interference in the internal administration of justice by the lords marcher. But it was possible for the king to enter into indentures with individual marcher lords binding them to observe certain principles in the exercise of their jurisdictions. It is probable that Edward IV had had to resort to this method of attempting to oblige the lords to improve their performance of duty. An ‘Indenture for the Marches’ was made on 1 March 1490 between Henry VII and Jasper, duke of Bedford, in his capacity of marcher lord of Pembroke, Glamorgan, Newport, Abergavenny, Caldicot, and Magor, whereby Jasper was bound to oblige his officers to exact from his men in the lordships surety for good behaviour and due appearance in court. About the same time a similar indenture was made with William Herbert, earl of Huntingdon, as lord of Chepstow, Gower, Tretower, and Crickhowell. After Prince Arthur’s death in April 1502, the council in the Marches advised the king that all lords marcher should be bound by indentures in similar fashion and presumably this was done, although only a few such indentures are known to have survived.1 He did not attempt to encroach upon the jurisdiction of the lords over felonies within their lordships, but he did seek to prevent the notorious abuse whereby criminals could escape justice by fleeing from the jurisdiction of one lord into the territory of another wherein he had not committed an offence. The agreements aimed at making such persons ‘extraditable’ as between lordships and generally to cause a lord’s official to implement properly the jurisdictional rights vested in their lords. But to make agreements was one thing; it remained another and far more difficult matter to ensure that these agreements were kept. In practice they could not be enforced, Henry VII’s attempts proved to be inadequate, and their failure contributed to the more radical changes envisaged in Henry VIII’s act of 1536.2