Henry VII

by S B Chrimes

  If the penury of his earlier years contributed, along with reasons of State, to his becoming sufficiently over-zealous in the accumulation of wealth as to incur a reputation for avariciousness, even miserliness, in his later years, this was a fault which gave an unwonted strength to a Crown weakened for generations by improvident kings. If over-preoccupation in his later years with the problem of security which had inevitably loomed large during the earlier years became something of an obsession and led him into arbitrary and unjust actions, at least he left a Crown more secure than it had been since the best days of Edward III. It was unfortunate perhaps that his fears for security should have taken on the colour of additional avarice. Yet to seek to control his subjects by getting at their purse-strings was better than the more violent forms of terrorism that had been not uncommon in the past and were to reappear in magnified form in the times of his successors. It may be that Henry VII’s reputation would have been less ambiguous if his life had ended a few years sooner. But it would hardly have been conducive to either the security of the dynasty or the welfare of the realm if his heir had succeeded to the throne at any earlier age than he did. Providence does, after all, move in mysterious ways (it would not be Providence otherwise), and the humble historian can hardly expect to assess the swings and the roundabouts with any precision.

  His reign was unspectacular and though full of surprising and striking events, not at any point sensational, glamorous, or dramatic. But his services to the realm were immeasurable, far greater than he himself could have imagined or predicted. His regime produced a pacification, an orderliness, a cohesion, a viability in the forms and machinery of government, a sustained effectiveness without which stability and consolidation could not have been obtained, and provided an indispensable standpoint for subsequent growth and flowering. It vindicated the achievements of the past, and provided potential for the fluorescence of the later Tudor period. It brought England on towards its ‘manifest destiny’ as Great Britain. He himself and his policies introduced a Welsh element that could make more meaningful and fruitful the further integration of the next reign. He brought pacification, albeit temporary, into relations with Scotland, the matrimonial alliance with which was to usher in the formation of the greater kingdom. With Ireland he could at least create a modus vivendi, whilst maintaining in principle the ultimate sovereignty of the Crown.

  He made a fresh appraisal of the problems of European international relations. He jettisoned the chimera of the old Angevin empire and the Plantagenet day-dreams of expansion. He recognized faits accomplis without too much useless protest. Mediation and the encouragement and preservation of a balance of power, not aggression or conquests, were his objectives, as befitted a realist who realized the limitations of his power. The influence he sought to wield was financial rather than military. In any event, the force of circumstances prevented him from making any disastrous interventions that he may have entertained, as indeed he did as regards Castile in his last years. On the whole, he maintained a substantial measure of non-commitment. When he did commit himself, he avoided committing himself too far, and continued to enjoy a large measure of freedom of manœuvre. The parvenu Tudor diplomatized himself into a position in which at one time or another Aragon and Castile, the Valois, and the Hapsburgs all sought his goodwill, and achieved or contemplated marriage alliances with his family. All of them learnt to forgo attempts to subvert him; all learnt to respect his strength; all preferred his goodwill to his hostility.

  If it be true that England showed a greatness and a marked flowering of her spirit and genius in the course of the sixteenth century, such a development would have been inconceivable without the intermediation of Henry of Richmond’s regime. Not for him were the vast egoisms of his son Henry nor the gloriations of his grand-daughter Elizabeth. But without his unspectacular statecraft their creative achievements would have had no roots. His steady purposefulness saved England from mediocrity. It was not the union of the Roses that mattered, symbolic enough though that was. What mattered most in the long run was the spadework without which the springs of national genius would not be freed. In the ultimate analysis, the quality of Henry VII was not that of a creator, but rather of a stabilizer, for lack of whom the ships of State are apt to founder. For that quality, he stands out pre-eminent among British monarchs.

  1 See below, Appendix F.

  2 As Busch (op. cit. App. II, 421) observed, ‘we must, therefore, regard every statement of Bacon’s for which no special original authority can be referred to, with a distrust which is only too well justified’. I am indebted to the kindness of Dr D. S. T. Clark, of University College, Swansea, for allowing me to see and use his at present unpublished Ph.D. thesis, ‘Francis Bacon: the study of history and the science of man’ (Cambridge, 1970). In this thesis Dr Clark includes a substantial critique of Bacon’s Henry VII, not so much from the point of view of the validity of Bacon’s account of Henry VII’s reign as in relation to his general philosophical and scientific principles and outlook. It is much to be hoped that this important study will become available in print.

  3 Anglica historia, ed. Hay, 145–7. Henry VII invited Vergil in 1506 to compose a history of England, and the text for Henry VII’s reign was probably composed 1512–13 (ibid. xx). He recorded that when he first came to England, as deputy for Adriano Castelli as papal collector, he was most courteously received by the king, and was ever after treated kindly by him (ibid. 133). It is hardly sufficient to dismiss Vergil’s picture of Henry VII as ‘highly idealized’, as does M. McKisack, Mediaeval history in the Tudor age (1971), 103. Nor does it follow that because the attribution of avariciousness to princes was common form among the biographers of (deceased) princes of the period, therefore Henry VII was not avaricious.

  1 The contemporary ballad, ‘The song of the Lady Bessy’, described Henry, when still in exile, as having a long pale face, with a wart a little above his chin; ‘His face is white, the wart is red’, Kingsford, English historical literature, 251. The vivacity of his expression and the liveliness of his eyes were often remarked; Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, xlviii.

  1 The English works of John Fisher, ed. J. E. B. Mayor, E.E.T.S., extra ser. XXVII (1886, repr. 1935), Pt I, 269).

  2 Cal. S.P. Venetian, I, 751; Pollard, op. cit. 158–9.

  1 Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, 177–8; Pollard, op. cit. II, 4.

  2 Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, 238; and Pollard, op. cit. I, 238–9.

  3 Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, 439; and Pollard, op. cit. I, 298.

  4 Cal. S.P. Venetian, I, No. 942; Pollard, op. cit. I, 331.

  5 H. Ellis, Original letters, 1st ser. I (1825), 46; and Pollard, op. cit. I, 217.

  6 ibid. 218.

  1 H. Ellis, Original letters, 1st ser. I (1825), 53; Pollard, op. cit. III, 187–9.

  2 Henry VII, 217.

  3 Cal. S.P. Venetian, I, 754, 833; Pollard, op. cit. I, 162, 231.

  4 See above, p. 301, fn. 1.

  5 Annals of Ulster, III, 465; Pollard, op. cit. III, 289. She is said to have been somewhat dominated by Lady Margaret Beaufort (Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, xlix).

  1 Sir Richard Pole (K.G., 23 April 1499; G.E.C., II, App. II), together with other members of the Prince’s Council, had been appointed to the commission to enquire into the lands of Sir William Stanley in 1495. C.P.R., I, 29.

  2 Printed in John Leland, De rebus Brittanicis collectanea, V, 373–4; and F. Grose and T. Astle, Antiquarian repertory, II (1808), 322–3, from College of Arms MS. 1st m.13. cf. S. Anglo, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, XXVI (1963), 54, n. 7; and Spectacle, pageantry, and earlv Tudor policy, 57–8. On Leland’s work, see M. McKisack, op. cit. c. 1.

  3 op. cit. 307.

  1 Cited by R. L. Storey, op. cit. 62.

  2 The religious orders in England, III (1959), 3.

  3 See above, p. 241.

  1 J. O. Halliwell, Letters of the kings of England (1896–8), I, 185–94; Pollard, op. cit. III, 165–72.

  2 For the subject generally, see
Busch, op. cit. 311–13, and refs therein. On Sheen, see R. Allen Brown, H. M. Colvin, A. J. Taylor, History of the king’s works (1963), II, 994–100.

  3 See the account of Catherine of Aragon’s reception and entertainment in 1501, in Leland, Collectanea, IV, 352–73; cf. generally, S. Anglo, op. cit. 8–108.

  1 The great bulk of the accounts of Henry VII’s expenditure remains in manuscript, in P.R.O., or B.M. collections, and has never been given the detailed study and analysis that it deserves. See the list in W. C. Richardson, op. cit. App. III. Craven Ord’s incomplete transcripts from the King’s Book of Payments 1491–1505 are in B.M. MSS Add. 7099. Selections from these were published as an appendix to Robert Henry’s History of Great Britain (1824). Excerpts from Ord’s volume were printed by S. Bentley, Excerpta historica (1831), 85–133, which are largely relied upon here. Detailed references to items of expenditure appear to be otiose for the present purpose. See below, Appendix E.

  2 One of his jesters was called ‘the foolish duke of Lancaster’.

  3 ‘To the young damsel that daunceth £30; to a little mayden that daunceth £12.’

  1 Quintin Paulet, from Lille, was keeper of the king’s library before 30 March 1500 (C.P.R., II, 208). The king’s humble servant, John Porth, keeper of certain books of the king, was rewarded in 1508 (ibid. 564). As early as December 1485 Peter Actoris was granted the office of king’s stationer with licence to import printed and unprinted books free of customs (ibid. I, 45). It is known that Henry VII gave Caxton the French text of The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chivalrye (published in London in 1490) for translation and printing (S. Anglo, Machiavelli (1969), 154).

  2 J. Otway-Ruthven, The king’s secretary (1939), App. F. For further on Carmeliano and humanism in general, see R. Weiss, Humanism in England during the fifteenth century, 2nd ed. (1957).

  3 Opus epistolarum, ed. P. S. Allen, etc., cited Scarisbrick, op. cit. 13–14.

  1 L. & P., I, 231–40; Pollard, op. cit. I, 240–50. The date of this document is uncertain. As Pollard noted (ibid. 240), it is probably later than Gairdner’s suggestion of 1503. It must be between 1502 when Sir Nicholas Vaux was appointed lieutenant of Guisnes and such date early in 1506, when it became no longer feasible that Sir Anthony Brown’s wife Lucy (niece of Warwick the Kingmaker and daughter of John Neville, Marquis Montagu), who ‘loveth not the king’s grace’, might let in through a postern of the castle her kinsman Edmund de la Pole, as Sir Hugh Conway feared. Who Flamank was is not clear, but he might conceivably be the John Flemming who was mayor of Southampton in 1505, probably the same person who was granted the office of controller of customs and subsidies in that port in 1507 (C.P.R., II, 437, 532).

  1 See above, p. 213.

  2 G. R. Elton, ‘Henry VII: rapacity and remorse’, H.J., I (1958), 21–39; J. P. Cooper, ‘Henry VII’s last years reconsidered’, ibid. II (1959), 103–29; G. R. Elton, ‘Henry VII: a restatement’, ibid. IV (1961), 1–29. Elton’s two articles are hereafter referred to as (1) or (2).

  1 Elton (2), 28.

  2 See above, ch. 11.

  3 See above, ch. 10.

  4 See above, p. 211.

  5 See above, p. 215.

  1 I am greatly indebted to the good offices of Dr C. F. Richmond, and the kindness and generosity of Mr C. J. Harrison, of the University of Keele, for allowing me to see and use his article and transcript of the document, which he discovered among the papers of the marquis of Anglesey at Plas Newydd, under the title of ‘The petition of Edmund Dudley’, now published in E.H.R., LXXXVII (1972), 82–99. The petition was addressed to Bishop Fox, keeper of the Privy Seal and Sir Thomas Lovell, chancellor of the Exchequer and constable of the Tower; it was handed to John Young, master of the Rolls, who had it copied into his book, and on 20 August 1509 a copy of this was made. The surviving copy appears to have been a copy of that, made later in the sixteenth century.

  1 The will of Henry VII, ed. T. Astle (1775), 11 ff., cited G. R. Elton, loc. cit. 37–8. Elton concedes that Henry’s remorse was real enough, but sought to enter into questions of his motives and the practical results of his gesture which are irrelevant to the point.

  2 See above, p. 302.

  3 See above, p. 308.

  4 Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, No. 811.

  5 Bernard André, Annales, 108, 109, 113, says that Henry had an attack of gout in February to March 1508.

  6 Cal. S.P. Venetian, I, No. 906; Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, 460.

  1 P.V., 142–3.

  2 Cal. S.P. Venetian, No. 939. cf. Nos 941, 945; Cal. S.P. Spanish, I, 408, 439, 457, 460.

  3 J. Gairdner in Henry VII (1889), 208, stated that the king ‘had also pains in the chest and difficulty of respiration’, but I have not seen any authority for this assertion. John Fisher, loc. cit. 278, infers that Henry was unwilling to eat his food, however delicately prepared, long before his death.

  4 ibid. 277.

  5 His body was thereafter interred alongside that of his queen in the chapel he had begun to build in Westminster Abbey, which was completed in Henry VIII’s time. Busch, op. cit. 315–17, gives a short account of the funeral ceremonies, mainly from Leland, Collectanea, IV, 303–9.

  1 Thomas More made a covert attack on Henry VII’s policies in his epigram on Henry VIII’s coronation (The latin epigrams of Thomas More, ed. L. Bradner and C. A. Lynch (Chicago, 1953), 16–21). Edmund Dudley also made implied criticisms of Henry VII’s regime, especially in the matter of interference with justice by Privy Seal and other letters, in his Tree of the commonwealth, ed. Brodie (1948), 35–6.

  2 Hughes and Larkin, op. cit. 79–81. Henry VIII also issued an accession pardon of his own, dated 25 April, covering a far wider range of matters (ibid. 81–3).

  3 loc. cit. (1), 36–7.

  4 J. R. Lander, loc. cit. 352.

  5 Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen, etc. (1906–58), I, No. 215, cited ibid. 351; and Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 12.

  1 Elton, loc. cit. (2), 20–1.

  2 J. C. Cooper, loc. cit. 177 ff.

  3 Elton, ibid. (1), 23.

  4 R. L. Storey, op. cit. 210.

  5 Elton, loc. cit. (2), 26.

  6 ibid. 24–6.

  1 Harrison, op. cit.

  2 On Dudley’s career, see D. M. Brodie, ‘Edmund Dudley, minister of Henry VII’, T.R.H.S., 4th ser. XV (1932), 133–61; and her edition of his The tree of the commonwealth (1948). Little modern work has been done on Empson, but the careers of both were very similar. Both were common lawyers by profession, both had been members of parliament and speakers of the commons, both rose to influence by Henry VII’s employment of them as very active members of the Council Learned in the Law. Neither appears to have had powerful relatives or friends.

  3 T. F. T. Plucknett, Taswell-Langmead’s English constitutional history, 11th ed. (1960), 251. Elton makes a similar point in England under the Tudors (1955), 71

  4 Harrison, loc. cit.

  APPENDICES

  Appendix A

  OWEN TUDOR AND THE PRIVY COUNCIL 1437

  The documents are printed in Proceedings and ordinances of the Privy Council (1834–7), V, 46–50, from B.M. MS. Cott. Cleopatra F. IV, fos 103b–105b. They are in English, not in Norman French as T. Artemus Jones (loc. cit. 103) unaccountably stated, and the ‘translations’ he provided were simply extended transcriptions, and the source is not pp. 6–19 of the Proceedings, but as above. What Jones called Nicolas’s ‘long footnote’ is in fact a passage in the latter’s Preface, xvi–xix.

  The more important of the two documents is specifically dated 15 July in the fifteenth year of Henry VI, i.e. 1437, and is written in not very lucid style, with a good many lacunae and uncertain phrases, even though collated by Nicolas with another extant version (contained in the same MS. as above, loc. cit.).

  A paraphrase of the contents of the two documents is needed in order to make sense of them. On 15 July 1437, the council met in the Chapel Chamber at Kennington. The king himself was not present, but t
hose attending were Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, John, bishop of Bath and Wells, chancellor, John Kemp, archbishop of York, William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, Henry, earl of Northumberland, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, Walter, Lord Hungerford, John, Lord Tiptoft, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, treasurer, William Lyndwood, keeper of the Privy Seal, and William Philip. It was recalled that not long ago, soon after the death (i.e. 3 January) of Queen Catherine, the king’s mother, with whom ‘Oweyn Tidir dwelt’, the king had desired Owen to come into his presence. Owen, however, had refused to do this unless on the king’s behalf it were promised that he should ‘freely come and freely go’. Henry VI had promised this, and had instructed the duke of Gloucester to inform Owen accordingly. The question was whether the arrest ‘now late made’ by the king’s command was lawful and not derogatory to either the king or the duke. The conclusion reached was that the act was lawful, for the following reasons.

  When the king’s promise had been conveyed to Owen, then at Daventry, by Gloucester’s emissary, one Miles Sculle, he refused to accept it because it was not in writing and declined to come to the king. He did, none the less, come to London and went straight into sanctuary at Westminster, where he remained for many days. Some people, however, out of ‘friendship and fellowship’, induced him to go to a tavern at Westminster Gate, and some time after that, he did come into the king’s presence. He had told Henry VI that he understood that he, the king, had been ‘heavily informed’ about him and allegations made that he had offended and displeased the king. Owen had declared his innocence and affirmed that he had given no occasion for offence or displeasure, offered to answer anything that could be laid against him, and so submitted himself. Thereafter he had ‘returned to Wales’.