sn 



HKN-RY VII. (OF ENGLAND.) 



HENRY VII. (OP ENGLAND). 



attempt, nevrral underwent the mat tito ; other* escaped death by 

 flight ; many were attainted, among the rest the Countess of Rich- 

 mood, wboM life wai only |>ar<-.l at the intoroserion of her husband 

 Lord Stanley. Henry himself returned to Bretagne, and there at 

 Chritma, in the presence of a meeting of the English exiles to the 

 number of 500. held in the cathedral of Rhedon, he solemnly swore 

 to many Elizabeth aa soon as ho should have triumphed over the 

 usurper, and in return the assembly promised him fealty on that 

 condition, and did him homage as their sovereign. A few months 

 after this howerer Henry and his friends found it expedient to 

 withdraw from Bretagne to avoid the machinations of the duke's 

 minister Londois, who had been gained over by Richard, and had 

 prevailed upon the duke to take measures for betraying them to the 

 Knglish kin;. They succeeded in making their escape to the territory 

 of the French king, where they spent another year in making prepara- 

 tions fur a new expedition under the countenance and with the assist- 

 ance of the kin?, Charles VIII. At length, on the 1st of August 1485, 

 Henry railed with his fleet from Horfleur, and on the 7th Inndod at 

 IQlford-Haven in Wales. The two rivals encountered at liosworth in 

 Leicestershire, on the 22nd, when the result wss that Henry obtained 

 a complete victory, which, with the death of Richard, who fell iu the 

 battle, at once placed the crown on his head. This was afterwards 

 reckoned the first day of his reign, an arrangement by which only 

 those who had actually drawn their swords against him at Boswortu 

 were made to be guilty of treason, and whatever acts had been done in 

 the service of the usurper (as Richard was considered) up to the eve 

 of that battle were overlooked. [RICHARD III.] 



Henry's marriage with Elizabeth was not solemnised till the 1 Sth of 

 January I486, before which time it had been enacted by the parlia- 

 ment that " the inheritance of the crown should be, rest, remain, 

 and abide in the most royal person of the then sovereign lord King 

 Henry VII., and the heirs of his body lawfully coming, perpetually 

 with the grace of God so to endure, and in none other;" the only 

 security taken for the marriage being a request subsequently pre- 

 sented to the king by the Commons along with the grant of tonnage 

 and poundage for life, that he would be pleased " to take to wife and 

 consort the Princess Elizabeth," with which, after it had been formally 

 concurred in by the lords spiritual and temporal, Henry intimated 

 that he was willing to comply. It has been usually asserted that 

 Henry throughout their union treated his queen with marked coldness 

 and neglect. He must have felt indeed that he owed nothing to any 

 preference that had been shown for him by a woman who was equally 

 ready to give her hand to his deadliest enemy, had the fortune of the 

 contest been different; but it would appear that, from policy, if not 

 from affection, he Utterly behaved to her with more attention than he 

 had at first shown ; and there is even some evidence that their domestic 

 intercourse came at length to breathe more cordiality and tenderness 

 than has been generally supposed. 



It was not to be expected that a reign commencing in such cir- 

 cumstances should be undisturbed by insurrectionary attempts. A 

 succession of such movements kept Henry in disquietude for many 

 years. The first that occurred was that headed by Francis, viscount 

 Lovel, in April 1486, which was speedily and effectually put down. 

 1 !efore the end of the same year however a new and more formidable 

 commotion was excited by the imposture of the boy Lambert Simnel, 

 the son of a joiner at Oxford, who waa put forward as Edward Plan- 

 tagenet, earl of Warwick, the son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, 

 brother of Richard III. The young prince in question had, in fact, 

 been lodged hi the Tower by Henry among the first acts of his reign, 

 and he remained immured in that fortress while the person who had 

 assumed his name was receiving royal honours in Ireland as Edward VI. 

 Simnel was soon joined both by Lord Lovel, who had made his escape 

 from the recent disturbance, and by John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, 

 whose mother was a suter of Edward IV., and who had been at one 

 time declared heir to the crown by the late king after the death of 

 his own son. The Duchess of Burgundy, another sister of Edward IV., 

 aUo gave her countenance and effective aid to the enterprise of the 

 pretender, whom probably the friends of the House of York merely 

 intended to make use of for effecting their first object, the ejection of 

 the present king. The brief royalty of Simnel however was termi- 

 nated Juno 16, 1487, by the defeat of his adherents in the battle of 

 Stoke, in which Lincoln himself was slain. The imposture of Simnel 

 was followed after some years by the appearance of the more cele- 

 brated pretender Perkin Warbeck, who was asserted by his adherents 

 to be Richard, duke of York, the younger brother of Edward V., and 

 generally nppoed to have been murdered along with him in the 

 Tower. Warbeck arrived in Ireland from Lisbon in the beginning of 

 May 1492, and was afterwards acknowledged as Duke of York, or rather 

 as Richard, king of England, not only by the Duchess of Burgundy, but 

 by the governments both of France and Scotland. This affair occupied 

 llenry for the next five or six years; for it was not till the end of 1497 

 that the adventurer was finally nut down. Another pretended Earl 

 of Warwick next arose, one Ralph Wulford, or Wilford, the son of a 

 shoemaker, whose attempt however was immediately nipped in the 

 bud by bis apprehension and execution, in March 1490. The restless 

 Ruccenion of these conspiracies seems at last to have convinced Henry 

 that his throne would never bo secure, nor the kingdom at peace, until 

 the persons who were nude rallying-poiuts by his enemies were pul 



out of existence. The same year in which Wulford was put to death 

 witnessed the executions of both Perkin Warbeck and the Earl of 

 Warwick. From this time Henry's reign was one of complete internal 

 ;rannuillity, of which he chiefly took advantage to augment bin revenue 

 and his hoarded treasures extracting money from his subjects on all 

 sorU of pretences, which were not the less oppressive for being gene- 

 rally legal hi their form and colour. The English law at this time, if 

 only stretched as far as it would go, was abundantly sufficient for the 

 purposes of the most exorbitant tyranny. The chief instruments of 

 Henry's rapacity were two lawyers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund 

 Dudley, names immortalized by the detestation of their country. 



Henry was early in his reign involved in the politics of the Continent 

 by the quarrel which arose between Francis, duke of Bretagne, and 

 Charles VIIL of France, with both of whom he had been connected 

 before he came to the throne, and each of whom applied to him for his 

 assistance. This qunrrel, by the death of Francis soon after it broke 

 out, leaving only two daughters, one of whom also soon afterward! 

 died, became in fact a contest for the possession of I'.reUgne on the 

 part of France. This was an object to which the public mind iu 

 England was strongly opposed ; but although Henry was fur. 

 appear to go along with the national feeling, he deferred taking any 

 steps to prevent the subjugation of the Bretons till it was too late. 

 Tho money that was eagerly voted by parliament to fit out an expe- 

 dition he collected very carefully, but instead of fighting he endeavoured 

 to manage the matter by the cheaper method of negotiation. After- 

 wards indeed, iu the spring of 1489, he found himself compel! 

 cqitip a small force, which proceeded to Bretagne; but he had jn-.-vi- 

 ously assured the French government that if the troops were s^nt they 

 should act only on the defensive, au engagement which was faithfully 

 kept. Charles eventually compelled the Duchess of Brctafine tj marry 

 him, after she had been affianced to Maximilian, the King of the 

 Romans; and the duchy was thus finally annexed to the French ci-iwn. 

 The indignation hi England at this result forced Henry to conduct an 

 army to France in person, in the beginning of October 1492 ; but ho 

 had already secretly arranged a peace with Charles, and before there 

 was any fighting the treaty was published in the beginning of November. 

 By this treaty, called the Treaty of Estaples, Charles bound himself to 

 pay Henry the sum of 149,0002. sterling, in half-yearly instalments. 

 In 1496, notwithstanding this peace, Henry joined the league of thu 

 pope, the King of the Romans, the King of Castile, the Duke of Milan, 

 and the republic of Venice, which, after Charles had overrun the 

 kingdom of Naples in 1494, had in a few mouths expelled him from 

 his sudden conquest; but when Charles died iu 1493, the Treaty of 

 Estaples was renewed with his successor Louis XII., and continu 1 t > 

 regulate the relations of the two kingdoms to the end of the reign. 



By successive truces with James 11L and James IV., the peace with 

 Scotland waa preserved till 1495, when, on the recommendation of 

 the French king and the Duchess of Burgundy, Pcrkiu Warbeck was 

 received in that kingdom as the rightful heir of the English crown. 

 King James not only assisted the adventurer with money and troops, 

 but gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a relation of 

 his own. After Warbeek'a final discomfiture however in ]4y7, a new 

 truce was concluded between the two countries, to last till the 

 expiration of a year after both kings should be dead ; and this led in 

 1502 to a treaty of perpetual peace, cemented by the marriage of J aim-* 

 with Henry's eldest daughter, the princess Margaret. ThU marriage, 

 from which flowed, after thu lapse of a century, the important political 

 result of the union of th-- two crowns, was solemnised at Edinburgh 

 on the Sth of August 1503. 



Nearly two years before this, namely, November 14th 1501, a 

 marriage, long contemplated and agreed upon, had been solemnised 

 between Henry's eldest son Arthur, prince of Wales, and Catherine, 

 the fourth daughter of Ferdinand, king of Castile. Arthur however, 

 who was a prince of the highest promise, died within six months after 

 this time; and then it was arranged that Catherine should be married. 

 to his surviving brother Henry. The marriage of Catherine and 

 Arthur proved still more momentous in its consequences than that of 

 Margaret and James. 



Queen Elizabeth died on the llth of February 1503, a few days 

 after giving birth to a daughter; on which Henry lost no time in 

 proceeding to turn his widowhood to account in the acquirement of 

 some political advantage, or in the augmentation of his riches, now his 

 ruling passion, by means of a new matrimonial alliance. One dis- 

 appointment after another however met him in this pursuit, and after 

 having first made application to the widow of the King of Naples ; 

 then concluded a treaty with the Archduke Philip, husband of Joanna, 

 queen of Castile, for the hand of his sister Margaret, widow of the 

 Duke of Savoy ; and finally, on the death of Philip in September 1506, 

 once more changed his ground, and proposed himself as the husband 

 of Philip's widow, the Queen Joanna, who was insane he died liclbiv 

 he could accomplish his object. 1 1 is death took place at Richmond, 

 as the royal palace at Sheen was now called, on the 22nd of April 

 1509, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign and the fifty-third of 

 his ago. 



The children of Henry VII. by his queen, Elizabeth of York, were 

 1, Arthur, born September 20th 1480, created Prince of Wales 1489, 

 married to Catherine of Spain (to whom he had been contracted eleven 

 years before), November 14th 1501, died at Ludlow Castle April 2nd 



