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HENRY VII. -VIII. OF ENGLAND 



the king's weak mind being entirely eclipsed, he 

 was appointed protector by parliament. On the 

 king's recovery he was indisposed to give up his 

 power, and levied an army to maintain it. On 

 22d May 1455 the first battle of St Albans was 

 fought, and the Yorkists were victors ; the Duke 

 of Somerset, the queen's favourite minister for the 

 time, was slain, and the king himself was taken 

 prisoner. This was the first battle of twelve that 

 were fought between the Houses of York and Lan- 

 caster in the Wars of the Roses (for an account 

 of the struggle, see ROSES, WARS OF THE ; see also 

 EDWARD IV.)- A return of Henry's disorder made 

 York again protector in 1455-56 ; and on his re- 

 covery the poor king vainly strove to maintain 

 peace between the duke's faction and the queen's. 

 Margaret headed the Lancastrian forces, and never 

 relinquished the struggle ; but in 1461 Edward IV. 

 was proclaimed king, and in 1465 Henry was cap- 

 tured and committed to the Tower. In 1470 War- 

 wick restored him to the throne, but six months 

 after he was again in Edward's hands ; and at 

 Tewkesbury (4th May 1471 ) his son was slain and 

 Margaret taken prisoner. Edward returned to 

 London on the 21st May ; and that night Henry 

 was murdered in the Tower. Margaret was ran- 

 somed by Louis XI. in 1475, and returned to 

 France. Henry had lost both the kingdoms to 

 which he had succeeded, and seen all his friends 

 die vainly for his sake. The most unfortunate of 

 kings, his reign stands out in English history as 

 one long disaster. He himself was a just and 

 merciful prince, pious, pure, and generous ; but 

 the gentle and saintly scholar, with his fits of 

 imbecility, was no fit monarch for times so rough. 

 His highest claim on our gratitude is that he 

 founded Eton College and King's College, Cam- 

 bridge. 



See Stubbs ; Gairdner's Lancaster and York, and his 

 introduction to the Paston Letters (vol. i. 1872). 



Henry VII., founder of the Tudor dynasty, 

 was born at Pembroke Castle, the seat of his uncle, 

 the Earl of Pembroke, on January 28, 1457. His 

 father, Edmund Tudor, was the son of Owen Tudor, 

 a knight of Wales, and of his wife, Queen Cath- 

 arine, the widow of Henry V. ; he had been created 

 Earl of Richmond by his half-brother, Henry VI., 

 and died before his son's birth. His mother, Mar- 

 garet Beaufort, was the lineal representative of the 

 House of Lancaster, being descended from John 

 of Gaunt and Catharine Swinford, whose children 

 were legitimated after their marriage. The young 

 Earl 01 Richmond was thus the nearest heir, 

 after Richard III. had murdered his nephews, 

 the sons of Edward IV., except their sisters and 

 Richard himself. After Tewkesbury he found 

 asylum in Brittany, until he was invited to invade 

 England and rescue it from the usurper. The first 

 attempt (1483) ended in failure, and cost the Duke 

 of Buckingham his head ; but in August 1485 

 Richmond landed at Milford Haven, and marched 

 across the country to Bosworth, in Leicestershire, 

 where Richard was defeated and slain. Henry now 

 ascended the throne ; and his marriage with Eliza- 

 beth of- York, Edward IV.'s eldest daughter, by 

 which the White Rose and the Red were united, 

 was celebrated in the following January. His 

 reign was troubled by several impostors claiming 

 the crown : first, Lambert Simnel, an Oxford joiner's 

 son, who professed to be the Earl of Warwick, 

 Clarence's son, and was proclaimed king in Ireland, 

 but was defeated at Stoke in 1487, taken prisoner, 

 and turned into a menial in the king's kitchen ; 

 next, Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be the 

 boy Duke of York, who had not been murdered in 

 the Tower by Richard III., and was patronised by 

 the Duchess of Burgundy and supported by the 

 Emperor Maximilian and James IV. of Scotland, 



but was finally captured in 1497 ; and finally,. 

 Ralph Wilford, who also pretended to be the Earl 

 of Warwick, but did not succeed in carrying his- 

 enterprise far, being almost at once taken and 

 hanged in 1499. In this year Henry, to end his- 

 troubles from pretenders, had Warbeck, whom he 

 had pardoned, and the true Earl of Warwick, a 

 youth who had known only captivity all his days, 

 convicted of a plot to recover their liberty, and 

 executed. The execution of the latter is the chief 

 blot on Henry's memory ; for the execution of Sir 

 William Stanley, deeply though the king had been 

 indebted to him, there appears to have been ample 

 justification. 



In 1492 Henry invaded France, but was bought 

 off with a promise of 745,000 crowns ; and this was 

 the only foreign war in which he engaged, although 

 his successful diplomacy gave him an influence in 

 continental politics greater than had been attained 

 by any king of England before him. Ferdinand 

 and Isabella's daughter, Catharine of Aragon, was 

 married to his son Arthur, Prince of Wales, a boy 

 of fifteen, just before he died ; and Henry's policy, 

 added to an objection to return part of her dowry, 

 ultimately led him to betroth her to his next son, 

 who became Henry VIII. A marriage from which 

 flowed most important consequences was that of his 

 eldest daughter, Margaret, to James IV. of Scotland, 

 which a century later brought about the union of the- 

 crowns. In February 1503 Henry's queen died, and 

 in his active endeavours to obtain a second wife, 

 with a sufficiently large dowry, he proposed a few 

 months later to marry his own daughter-in-law, 

 Catharine, who had been left a widow by Arthur 

 the year before ; and in 1506 he even offered to wed 

 her sister Juana, the insane heiress of Castile. 

 With similar projects he was still engaged when 

 he died on April 22, 1509, leaving behind him 

 1,800,000, worth 18,000,000 in our currency. 

 He was a lover of peace, the friend of the church, 

 the patron of scholarship and architecture, as well 

 as of commerce and adventure. Bacon calls him ' a- 

 wonder for wise men,' and 'this English Solomon, 

 for Solomon also was too heavy upon his people in. 

 exactions.' But Henry's avarice has been exagge- 

 rated. Chiefly he was a financier, yet his legis- 

 lation was wise and just. He not only ruled, but 

 governed England, and under him the country 

 prospered and the trading-class became more 

 powerful ; the taxation was probably not so 

 excessive as has been assumed, and the notorious 

 extortions of the king's lawyers, Dudley and 

 Empson (q.v. ), did not touch the great mass of the 

 people. Nor was the king greedy of gold for its 

 own sake; 'to him,' says Gairdner, 'a large 

 reserve was a great guarantee for peace and 

 security.' As a politician Henry was pitted against 

 such cunning opponents as Ferdinand of Spain, and 

 at least matched them all in subtlety and in fore- 

 sight ; and the throne which he had won he left to. 

 his son stable and secure. 



See Bacon's History of Henry VII. ; Gairdner's Henry 

 the Seventh ( ' English Statesmen ' series, 1889 ) ; and Busch's 

 England under the Tudors ( vol. i. trans. 1895 ). 



Henry VIII., the second of the Tudor mon- 

 archs of England, was born in 1491, and ascended 

 the throne in 1509. He was the second son of 

 Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, and thus 

 united the rival claims of the Houses of York and 

 Lancaster. Previous to the death of his elder 

 brother Henry had been intended for the church ; 

 and this early bent of his mind must in some- 

 measure explain his life-long interest in all matters 

 of religious faith and church government. During 

 the first years of his reign Henry held a place in 

 the hearts of his people such as no English monarch 

 before or since has ever held. This affectionate- 

 admiration, which with strangely little diminution! 



