Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this story, and to dismiss it, as Busch did,3 with the remark that ‘on the occasion of Arthur’s death, husband and wife displayed a certain warmth of affection’ seems to be a gross understatement. When a year later Queen Elizabeth herself died, Henry, it is said, ‘privily departed to a solitary place, and would no man should resort unto him’.1

  Henry shared the conventional religious beliefs and superstitions of his era. He was meticulous in his religious observances, his alms-giving, his patronage of churches and religious orders, his respect for saints and relics, and endowed prayers for his soul. All of these characteristics, together with his tactful and respectful relations with the papacy, gave him a generally recognized reputation as a sound churchman. But how far this reputation was based upon any genuine religious feeling remains a matter for conjecture. It is difficult to see how Professor David Knowles’s verdict can be improved upon. ‘Henry VII,’ he writes, ‘was not personally interested in religion in its theological or devotional aspects, still less in its spiritual depth, but neither was he a critic or libertine. His actions and policies, as we see them, were earthbound.’2

  It is clear enough that mundane considerations weighed most with him in making appointments to the episcopal bench,3 and also in his dealings with the papacy. Whilst he was glad enough to receive the advantage of papal support for his accession and throne, his diplomatic endeavours, his position as a European monarch, his desire to make a second marriage, and to receive symbols of papal favour and goodwill, he could resist papal blandishments to participate in a sort of Crusade against the encroachments of the Turks, with diplomatic skill. He could carry on a voluminous correspondence with the popes on this subject, spread over the years, pay eloquent lip-service to the excellence of the cause, and even contribute to it substantial financial aid out of his own funds, but when it came to the question of his personal participation in such a war, his evasion was masterly.

  If [he wrote] neither of the kings of France and Spain will take upon him the charge to give in proper person assistance to the Pope’s Holiness, the king for great care, zeal, and good mind that he beareth to the religion of Christ’s faith … albeit that he is farther from those parts than other princes be, and also that his costs by reason of such farness, should be greater than the other princes should, yet, having a sufficient space to prepare himself to so long a journey, is contented in his own proper person and with army according, to take upon him the said charge, to come personally and join with the Pope’s said holiness, if the same Pope will personally go against the said Turk.1

  It is not surprising that Henry never did set out on such an impractical project. His patronage of ecclesiastical buildings and foundations provides more tangible manifestations of his contribution to the religious life of his time.2

  That he especially favoured the Spiritual or Observant branch of the Franciscan order may well be taken as an indication of his religious discrimination. At any rate he founded three houses for them, at Canterbury, Newcastle, and Southampton. But he did likewise for the conventuals at Richmond, Greenwich, and Newark. He built the Savoy Hospital in London to succour a hundred poor people, and planned another at Bath. Part of the cost of these foundations, however, he met by the appropriation and diversion of the revenues of sundry decayed ecclesiastical institutions, and he was willing enough to encourage others, including his mother, to found important and enduring educational bodies.

  The destruction by fire of his favourite residence at Sheen in 1497 gave him the opportunity to lavish care and money on the erection of a new palace at the same site, renamed Richmond. He spent money also on rebuilding Baynard’s Castle and the palace at Greenwich. Above all, he conceived and carried through nearly to completion, partly with financial assistance from decayed priories and other benefices, the superb project now known as the Chapel of Henry VII at the east end of Westminster Abbey. This was to be the last resting place of himself and his only queen, the monument and symbol of his life’s work.

  Neither this nor any of his architectural creations was such as one would ascribe to a monarch who was a miser. These were not the products of a niggardly mind. Whether he was avaricious or rapacious is quite another question, but that in fact he was a liberal spender of his gains is demonstrated beyond doubt not only by these products but also by the magnificence of his court and expenditure upon a great diversity of interests, pastimes, and causes.

  It would be a great mistake to suppose that the court life3 maintained by Henry VII was drab, glum, or dreary. On the contrary, there was magnificence, impressive ceremonial, lavish display of costly clothing, decorations, jewels and plate, festivity on appropriate occasions, pageantry, banqueting, jousting, music, dancing, disguisings, revels, play-acting, and the like. All these displays and elaborate entertainment marked the great Church festivals, St George’s day, the outstanding family events, such as the christening, and knighting of Arthur, the reception of Catherine of Aragon, and their wedding; not to mention family funerals. By such displays of wealth, taste, and ingenuity, Henry could and did impress his courtiers, his subjects, and the ambassadors of foreign potentates. It was all part of Henry’s idea of kingship. But it was also an expression of his personality. It is evident that Henry knew how to enjoy himself in a great variety of ways, and was quite capable of participating in many recreations, pastimes, jollifications, and drolleries that one would not at first sight associate with the somewhat grim portrayals we have of him. The notion that his chief leisure occupation was initialling accounts of his income becomes an absurdity when it is seen how he spent substantial portions of that income.1 The care he lavished on his income accounts may well be deemed a fitting prudence for a monarch in his position, but the man himself can be better known by what he spent his money on.

  It is no surprise that he was addicted to the country life and was passionately devoted to hunting and hawking, and that he travelled about the country a very great deal, as indeed mediaeval kings commonly did. More revealing of his domestic occupations are the comparatively small but very frequent expenditures on a great variety of interests. Prominent is the frequency with which he lost money, sometimes considerable sums, in playing at cards, dice, tennis, and archery; at these he was often a loser; whether he ever won is not recorded. He often rewarded musicians and minstrels, singers, dancers, and sometimes bought musical instruments. Lords of Misrule, revellers, joculars, jesters,2 and dancers,3 frequently received bounty. Those that brought him rare animals, a lion, or a leopard, wild cats, or indeed some human freak, could expect tangible appreciation. Some, but not very much money was spent on the purchase of books or book-binding. That he collected some books, for which a librarian and a ‘keeper’ were provided,1 and that he could speak and read Latin, as well as speak French, is evident, but that much in the way of humanistic influences were at work in his court is far from clear. The fact that he instituted a Latin secretaryship and appointed the Italian scholar Peter Carmeliano to it before July 1495 is of no great significance in this connection, and may have been occasioned by a growing ignorance of Latin at court.2 The record of Erasmus’s visit in the company of Thomas More to court in 1499 is a tribute to the domestic bliss and musical pleasures of Henry VII and the precocity of Prince Henry rather than to any particular intellectual interests, however impressed he may have been by the progress of humanism elsewhere in the realm.3 Printers, poets, and rhymsters got rewards, as well as physicians, spies, and informers. Very large sums indeed went to the jewellers and goldsmiths who sold him his favourite forms of treasure.

  Some of these disbursements were only what would be expected from a monarch of the time. Others, especially casual gifts and alms, some clearly made on the spur of the moment, whether to the queen, to ambassadors, or to humble unfortunate subjects, show him capable of the impulsive gesture. When it came to the question of paying the costs of burials, it was doubtless inevitable that very large payments were made in respect of
Prince Arthur and Queen Elizabeth, but he need not have defrayed the cost of the burial of Edward, earl of Warwick, nor of Sir William Stanley, nor of a tomb for Richard III.

  It has been alleged (by Bacon) that Henry was ‘full of apprehensions and suspicions’. This may well have been so. Certainly the circumstances of most of his reign were such as to give him good cause. The long sequence of plots, conspiracies, and rebellions were quite enough to make any monarch apprehensive and suspicious. An unusually revealing document, which we have not yet had occasion to cite, discloses not only the basic fear that he had to contend with – that his dynasty might be displaced – but also a surprising reluctance on his part to credit tales of treasonable conduct.

  The document1 is a report sent to the king by one John Flamank (or Fleming) of a confidential conversation (at which Flamank was present) between Sir Richard Nanfan, deputy governor of Calais, Sir Hugh Conway, treasurer, Sir Sampson Norton, the master porter, and William Nanfan.

  In the course of the conversation, touching the security of the king and of Calais, Sir Hugh asserted that they must think of the future as well as the present, ‘for the king’s grace is but a weak and sickly man, not likely to be a long-lived man’. Not long since, he was sick and lay at his manor of Wanstead. At that time a number of great personages discussed among themselves the shape of things that might come should his grace depart this life. Some spoke of Buckingham, some of Edmund de la Pole, but none of them spoke of the prince of Wales. Sir Hugh, since coming to Calais, had mentioned this episode to Sir Nicholas Vaux, lieutenant of Guisnes and to Sir Anthony Brown, lieutenant of Calais Castle, and both had replied that they had ‘good holds to resort to’, by which they were sure to make their peace, ‘howsoever the world might turn*.

  Both Sir Richard and Sir Sampson urged that these matters should be reported to the king, but Sir Hugh repudiated the suggestion. ‘If,’ he said, ‘you knew King Harry our master as I do, you would be wary how you broke to him any such matters, for he would take it that anything you said came out of envy, ill-will, and malice, and you would have only blame and no thanks.’ In a previous experience, he said, he had incurred the king’s displeasure at the time when Lord Lovel was at Colchester, when a trusty friend of Sir Hugh’s had revealed Lovel’s plans under a pledge of secrecy. Nevertheless, because of his allegiance he had hurried to Sir Reginald Bray and informed him of the plot. Bray told the king, who sent for Conway and reasoned with him always contrary to his report and insisted that it could not be so. When Conway refused to reveal who the informer was, the king became angry and displeased. Conway now asserted that he would never again ‘tempt the king’ in such matters.

  Sir Richard Nanfan affirmed that the king had been very reluctant to believe any ill of Sir James Tyrell or Sir Robert Clifford. All the officials expressed grave concern for what would happen should the king die, and apprehension for the safety of Calais, in which there were a number of enemies both of the king and of them.

  What happened to Flamank’s report we do not at present know. What is significant in it is its revelation of the kind of grounds Henry had for apprehensions and suspicions, but at the time his reluctance to accept allegations of treason.

  Nevertheless, apprehension or suspicions of one kind or another, real or feigned, were doubtless in part at the root of those actions of his which in the long run earned him a reputation for avarice or rapacity. Such a reputation could not have come from his fiscal impositions, which were not remarkable, nor, as we have seen, from his unwillingness to spend money. But it could indeed arise from the extraordinary lengths to which he resorted in imposing bonds for monetary payments from a large number of his subjects, including many of the peers, bishops, and other men of substance, and lesser persons. The existence of this practice, not original to Henry VII, has, of course, been known for many years, but the extent and nature of it as operated by him, has only recently come to be realized.1

  Some years ago lengthy discussions were published2 mainly on the theme of whether Henry VII’s reputation for rapacity and extortion in his later years and the suggestion that he showed remorse during his last days were justified. These articles, running to over seventy pages of detailed argumentation and contention, were the most substantial contributions to an appraisal of Henry VII’s actions in certain spheres that have ever appeared. Professor Elton, in the first of these articles, sought to acquit Henry VII of both rapacity and remorse and perhaps adopted a somewhat roseate view of some of his financial activities whilst possibly underestimating his pious aspirations at the end. Mr J. P. Cooper indicated some of the weaknesses in Elton’s arguments, and this provoked a rejoinder which clarified matters in some particulars but left the general conclusions to be drawn somewhat in the air, except that Elton continued to maintain that it is ‘a false view which speaks of rapacity and oppression’.1

  It would be tedious and inappropriate to examine this controversy here in detail. Much can be learned from these articles, but the authors did not perhaps at the time they were writing focus sufficient attention on the field of action in which the king, if he were rapacious, had the maximum scope for displaying rapacity and so gave rise to cause for remorse, if he were remorseful. It is surprising that even then, out of the total of seventy-five pages devoted to the debate, barely two were spared to the vital question of the uses that Henry made of recognizances. There was nothing very significant about the king’s ordinary fiscal arrangements;2 he was if anything notably slack in enforcing the penal statutes, except in the sphere of commercial regulations.3 He was zealous in exercising his feudal prerogatives, which although basically lawful were undoubtedly stretched as far, if not indeed farther, than the older interpretation of the law would have countenanced, and it is hard not to conclude that these rights were applied with a rigour that was harsh enough to border on rapacity, whether by the king or by his agents.4

  But it was in the almost limitless possibilities of exacting bonds that the greatest scope for rapacity naturally existed, and the evidence has accumulated since 1958 that the king fell a victim to avarice which did manifest itself more markedly in 1502 onwards, and that this activity may have induced some remorse at the end. The exaction of recognizances from the nobility is now known5 to have gone much further than used to be imagined, and even though there might be a justifiable policy behind many of these exactions, and the actual cash exacted was much less than the totals bonded for, these totals themselves were often outrageously high and bespeak a distinctly rapacious mind, and a mind perhaps rather over-sensitive to fear and suspicion. These fears and suspicions as to the preservation of their allegiance by the peerage were certainly magnified by the deaths of Prince Arthur in 1502 and Queen Elizabeth in 1503 and the continued freedom of Edmund de la Pole and some of his brothers. All this no doubt comes under the heading of ‘policy’ whatever the pyschological motivations may have been. But the discovery in an unlikely place of a hitherto unknown document cannot fail to throw fresh and a distinctly baleful light on Henry VII’s zeal for exacting bonds or cash from many persons whose standing and potential were hardly such as to justify fears as to their future actions, political or otherwise.

  This document1 is nothing less than a confession by Edmund Dudley of eighty-four cases of unjust exactions for which he considered the executors of Henry VII’s will ought to make restitution or allowance. Dudley, who was arrested a few days after the death of Henry VII, indicted on a charge of constructive treason on 12 July 1509, found guilty and sentenced, was returned to the Tower to await execution, and wrote his confession and petition within the next four weeks.

  He addressed his document to Fox and Lovell, whom he wanted to be the instruments of ‘help and relief for the dead king’s soul’, and of justice. His plea for mercy was not for himself but for others. He had attempted to discuss the cases with Fox, whose failure to respond induced him to write the document. The document was kept secret, but Fox, Lovell, and Young were all three among the executors of Henry VI
I’s will and were also appointed to assess reparations to be made to those wronged by him. It was not Dudley’s purpose to accuse or malign his late master, but to press for his will to be carried out in the matter of reparation. But it is clear from a number of items in the petition that Henry was responsible for the decisions taken in many of these cases, and Dudley expressly states that the king’s purpose was ‘to have many persons in his danger at his pleasure’.

  In as much as Henry’s ‘mind and last will was especially that restitution should be made to all persons by his grace wronged contrary to the order of his laws’, Dudley had perused his books touching all such matters as he had been privy to, and set down the persons whom he thought were hardly treated ‘and much sorer than the causes required’.

  Many persons were bound to the king’s grace in sums of money, some by recognizance, others by obligation without any condition, but as a simple and absolute bond, payable at a certain day, ‘for his grace would have them so made’. ‘It were against reason and good conscience, these manner of Bondes should be reputed as perfect debtes: for I think verily his inward mind was never to use them, of these there are very many.’