37S 



HENRY VIIL (OF ENGLAND). 



HENRY VIII. (OP ENGLAND). 



874 



1502; 2, Margaret, born November 29th, 1489, married to King 

 James IV. of Scotland, August 8th, 1503, died 1539; 3, Henry, who 

 succeeded his father as Henry VIII. ; 4, Elizabeth, born July 2nd, 

 1492, died September 14th, 1495; 5, Mary, born 1498, married to 

 Louis XII. of France, November 5th, 1514, and secondly in 1515 to 

 Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, died June 25th, 1533; "6, Edmund, 

 born February 21st, 1499, soon after created Duke of Somerset, died 

 in infancy ; 7, Edward, born February 1500, died young ; and, 8, 

 Catherine, born February 2nd, 1503, died a few days after her mother. 



Bacon, in his striking and masterly ' History of the Reign of 

 Henry VIL,' has drawn this king as a hero of policy and craft, who 

 may almost compete with tho ' Principe ' of Macchiavel, if we make 

 allowance for the greater ruthlessness and more sanguinary spirit 

 natural to the Italian blood. It may be admitted that this great 

 writer, in the elaboration of his design, has been drawn into some 

 degree of exaggeration or over-refinement ; and he has probably also 

 BOfU-ned the more repulsive features in Henry's moral character, as 

 much as he has unduly exalted his intellectual endowments. But the 

 difficult position which he occupied, and the success with which he 

 maintained himself in it, vindicates the title of this sovereign to be 

 regarded as at least one of the greatest masters of kingcraft that 6gure 

 in history. Bacon compares him, justly enough, to Louis XI. of 

 France and Ferdinand of Spain, designating the three as " the tres 

 mayi of kings of those ages." The age in which Henry lived was that 

 of the birth of modern policy, and that in which the foundations were 

 laid of the still enduring system of the European states. This reign 

 therefore may be considered as the beginning of the modern history 

 of England. 



HENRY VIIL, the second son of Henry VII. by his queen, 

 Elizabeth of York, was born at Greenwich on the 28th of June 1491. 

 On the 1st of November following he was created Duke of York, and 

 in 1494 his father conferred upon him the honorary title of Lord- 

 Lieutenant of Ireland, Sir Edward Poyuings being appointed hia 

 deputy. The government of Sir Edward is famous for the enactment 

 of the statute, or rather series of statutes, declaring the dependence of 

 the Irish parliament upon that of England, which passes under his 

 name. Henry's nominal lord-lieutenancy appears to have lasted only 

 till the next year, when he exchanged that dignity for the office of 

 President of the Northern Marches. The king's design in these 

 appointment* seems to have been to oppose hia son's name to the 

 pretensions of Perkin Warbeck, and the efforts of the supporters of 

 that adventurer, first in Ireland and afterwards from the side of 

 ad. Although thus early distinguished by these and other civil 

 titles and appointments, it is stated by Paolo Sarpi, in his ' History 

 of the Council of Trent,' that Henry was from the first destined to the 

 arehbi-liopric of Canterbury; "that prudent king, his father," observes 

 Ixmi Herbert (in the ' History of his Life and Heign '), " choosing tbis 

 :tg the uiost cheap and glorious wy for disposing of a younger son." 

 lie received accordingly a learned education ; " so that," continues 

 this writer, " betides hia being an able Latinist, philosopher, and 

 divine, he was (which one might wonder at in a king) a curious 

 musician, as two entire masses composed by him, and often sung in 

 hi* chapel, did abundantly witness." As the death of his elder brother 

 Arthur however, on the 2nd of April 1502, made him heir to the crown 

 before he had completed his eleventh year, it is evident that his clerical 

 education could not have proceeded very far, and that what he knew 

 either of divinity or the learned tongues must have been for the most 

 put acquired without auy view to the church. There is a cautra- 

 ilictiou in the statements as to the time when he waa created Prince 

 of Wales ; but there is a patent in Rymer (vol. xiii., p. 11) appointing 

 him warden of the forest uf Gualtrea in Yorkshire by this title, June 

 22ud 1502, within three months after his brother's death. This is 

 consistent with what we are told by Holinshed, who, after relating the 

 death of Arthur, says " his brother, the Duke of York, was stayed 

 from the title of prince by the space of a month, till to women it 

 might appear whether the Lady Catherine, wife to the said Prince 

 Arthur, was conceived with child or not." 



Very soon after Arthur's death the singular project was started of 

 marrying Henry to his brother's widow. The proposition appears to 

 have originally come from Ferdinand and Isabella, the parents of the 

 princess, who were anxious to retain the connection with England ; 

 and to have been assented to by King Henry in great part from his 

 wish to avoid the repayment of tho dower of the princess. Tho filial 

 agreement between the two kings was signed on the 23rd of June 

 1508, and, according to the chroniclers, the parties were affianced on 

 .Sunday the 25th of the same mouth, at the Bishop of Salisbury 's houae 

 in Klet.t Street, although the dispensation was certainly not obtained 

 from Pope Julius II. till the 26th of December following. This bull 

 however contains a clause legitimatizing the marriage, although it 

 should nave been already contracted, or even consummated. It may 

 be observed that nobody at this time seems to have doubted that 

 Catherine's preceding marriage with Arthur had been followed by 

 consummation. 



Henry became king on the 22nd of April 1509, being then in his 



nineteenth year. On a memorial being presented by the Spanish 



ambassador, it was, notwithstanding the opposition of Warham, arch 



i I'ury, resolved in the council that the marriage with 



Catherine should be completed ; Fox, bishop of Winchester, strongly 



urging, among other reasons, "that there was uo room to doubt that 

 the princess wan still a virgin, since she herself affirmed it, offering 

 even to be tried by matrons, to show that she spoke the truth." The 

 marriage waa accordingly solemnised in the beginning of June. 



Henry was indebted for the warm and general gratulatiou with 

 which his accession was hailed by his subjects, partly to his distin- 

 guished personal advantages and accomplishments, and to some points 

 of manner and character adapted to take the popular taste ; partly to 

 tho sense of relief produced by the termination of the austere and 

 oppressive rule of his predecessor. One of the earliest proceedings of 

 the new reign was the trial and punishment of his father's ministers, 

 Dudley and Empsou. They were indicted for a conspiracy to take 

 possession of London with an armed force during the last illness of 

 the late king, and being convicted on this charge, aud afterwards 

 attainted by parliament, were, after lying in jail for about a year, 

 beheaded together on Tower Hill on the 17th of Auguat 1510. 



Henry had not been long upon the throne when he was induced to 

 join what was called the Holy League, formed against France by the 

 pope, the emperor, and the King of Spain. A force of 10,000 men 

 was sent to Biscay under the Earl of Dorset, in the spring of 1512, to 

 co-operate with an army promised by Ferdinand for the conquest of 

 Guicune ; but the Spanish king, after dexterously availing himself of 

 the presence of the English troops to enable him to overrun aud take 

 possession of Navarre, showed plainly that he had no intention of 

 assisting his ally in his object ; and after having had his ranks thinned, 

 not by the sword, but by disease, Dorset was compelled by discontents 

 in his camp, which rose at last to actual mutiny, to return to England 

 before the end of the year, without having done anything. Tho next 

 year Henry passed over in person to France with n new army, and 

 having been joined by the Emperor Maximilian, defeated the French 

 on the 4th of August, at Guiuegaste, in what was called the Battle of 

 the Spurs, from the unusual energy the beaten party are said to have 

 shown in riding off the ground, and took the two towns of Teroueuuo 

 and Tournay. On the 9th of September also tho Scottish king, 

 James IV., who as the ally of France had iuvaded England, was 

 defeated by the Earl of Surrey in the great battle of Floddeu, he him- 

 self with many of his principal nobility being left dead on the field. 

 This war with France however was ended the following year by a 

 treaty, the principal condition of which was that Louis XII., who had 

 just lost his queen, Ann of Bretagne, the same who had been in the 

 tirst instance married to his predecessor, Charles VIIL [HENRY VII.], 

 should wed Henry's sister, the Princess Mary. The marriage between 

 Louis, who was in his fifty-third, and the English princess, as yet only 

 in her sixteenth year, was solemnised on the 9th of October 1514 ; but 

 Louis died within three months, aud scarcely was she again her own 

 mistress when his young widow gavo her hand to Charles Brandon, 

 duke of Suffolk, an alliance out of which afterwards sprung a claim to 

 the crown. [GBET, LADY JANE.] 



The members of Henry's council, when he came to the throne, had 

 been selected, according to Lord Herbert, " out of those his father 

 most trusted," by his grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, " noted 

 to be a virtuous and prudent lady." A rivalry however and contest 

 for the chief power eoon broke out between Richard Fox, bishop of 

 Winchester, secretary aud lord privy seal, and Thomas Howard, earl 

 of Surrey (afterwards duke of Norfolk), who held tho office of lord 

 treasurer. This led to the introduction at court of the famous Thomas 

 Wolsey, who, being then Dean of Lincoln, was brought forward by 

 Fox to counteract the growing ascendancy of Surrey, aud who speedily 

 made good for himself a place in the royal favour that reduced all the 

 rest of the king's ministers to insignificance, and left in his hand for 

 a long course of years nearly the whole power of the state. [WOLSEY, 

 CARDINAL.] The reign of Wolsey may be considered as having begun 

 after the return of Henry from his expedition to France, towards the 

 close of the year 1513 ; and henceforth the affairs of the kingdom for 

 fourteen or fifteen years were directed principally by the interests of 

 his ambition, which governed and made subservient to its purposes 

 even the vanity and other passions of his master. 



The history of the greater part of this period consists of Henry's 

 transactions with his two celebrated contemporaries, Francis I. of 

 France, the successor of Louis XII., and Charles, originally archduke 

 of Austria, but who became king of Spain as Charles 1. by the death 

 of his mother's father, Ferdinand, in 1516, aud three years after was 

 elected to succeed his paternal grandfather Maximilian I. as emperor 

 of Germany. [CHABLES V. ; FRANCIS I.] His position might have 

 enabled the English king in some degree to hold tho balance between 

 these two irreconcileable rivals, who both accordingly made it a 

 principal point of policy to endeavour to secure his friendship and 

 alliance; but his influence on their long contention was in reality very 

 inconsiderable, directed as it was for the most part either by mere 

 caprice, or by nothing higher than the private resentments, ambitions, 

 and vanities of himself or his minister. The foreign policy of this 

 reign had nothing national about it, either in reality or even in 

 semblance ; it was neither regulated by a view to the true interests 

 of the country, nor even by any real, however mistaken, popular 

 sentiment. Henry had himself been a candidate for the imperial 

 dignity when the prize was obtained by Charles ; but be never had 

 for a moment the least chance of success. Fur a short time he 

 remained at peace, both with Charles and Francis ; the former of 



