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REFORMATION
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REFORMATION
(1497-1528)
The last twelve years of the reign of See also:
Henry allied himself with See also:
His chicanery need not, how-
ever, be censured over much, for the princes with whom
he had to See also:deal, and notably See also: The See also:mere suppression of insur- rule' rections like those of See also:Simnel and Warbeck was a small part of his task . The harder part was to recreate a spirit of See also:order and subordination among a nation accustomed to long See also:civil strife . His See also:instruments were ministers of ability chosen from the See also:clergy and the gentry—he seems to have been equally averse to trusting the baronage at the one end of the social See also:scale, or mere upstarts at the other, and it is notable that no one during his reign can be called a See also:court favourite . The best-known names among his servants were his great See also:chancellor, See also:Archbishop See also:Morton, See also:Foxe, See also:bishop of See also:Winchester, See also:Sir Reginald See also:Bray, and the lawyers See also:Empson and See also:Dudley . These two last See also:bore the brunt of the unpopularity of the See also:financial policy of the king during the latter See also:half of his reign, when the See also:vice of avarice seems to have grown upon him beyond all See also:reason . But Henry was such a hard-working monarch, and so See also:familiar with all the details of See also:administration, that his ministers cannot be said to have had any See also:independent authority, or to have directed their See also:master's course of See also:action . The machinery employed by the first of the Tudors for the suppression of domestic disorder is well known . The most important See also:item added by him to the administrative machinery of the realm was the famous See also:Star Chamber, The Star which was licensed by the GYlamher. See also:parliament of 1487 . It consisted of a small See also:committee of ministers, privy councillors and See also:judges, which sat to deal with offences that seemed to See also:lie outside the See also:scope of the See also:common See also:law, or more frequently with the misdoings of men who were so powerful that the local courts could not be trusted to execute See also:justice upon them, such as great landowners, sheriffs and other royal officials, or turbulent individuals who were the terror of their native districts . The need for a strong central court directly inspired by the king, which could administer justice without respect of persons, was so great, that the constitutional danger of establishing an autocratic judicial committee, untrammelled by the See also:ordinary rules of law, escaped See also:notice at the time . It was not till much later that the nation came to look upon the Star Chamber as the See also:special See also:engine of royal tyranny and to loathe its name . In 1500 it was for the common profit of the realm that there should exist such a court, which could reduce even the most powerful offender to order . One of the most notable parts of the king's policy was his long-continued and successful See also:assault on the abuse of " See also:livery and See also:maintenance," which had been at its height during Suppresthe Wars of the See also:Roses . We have seen the part which See also:Sion of it had taken in strengthening the See also:influence of those livery and who were already too powerful, and weakening the maintenordinary operation of the law . Henry put it down ance. with a strong hand, forbidding all liveries entirely, See also:save for the mere domestic retainers of each See also:magnate . His determination to end the See also:system was well shown by the fact that he heavily fined even the See also:earl of See also:Oxford, the See also:companion of his See also:exile, the Commercial treaties . English navigators . Foreign policy of Henry Vll . Marriage of James IV. of Scotland and Margaret Tudor . 1509-15131 See also:victor of See also:Bosworth, and the most notoriously loyal peer in the realm, for an ostentatious violation of the See also:statute . Where Oxford was punished, no less favoured See also:person could See also:hope to See also:escape . By the end of the reign the little hosts of badged adherents which had formed the See also:nucleus for the armies of the Wars of the Roses had ceased to exist . Edward IV., as has been already remarked, had many of the opportunities of the autocrat, if only he had cared to use them; but his See also:sloth and self-See also:indulgence stood in the way . Henry VII., the most laborious and systematic of men, turned them to See also:account . He formed his See also:personal See also:opinion on every problem of administration and intervened himself in every detail . In many respects he was his own See also:prime See also:minister, and nothing was done without his knowledge and consent . A consistent policy may be detected in all his acts—that of gathering all the machinery of See also:government into his own hands . Under the later Plantagenets and the Lancastrian See also:kings the great check on the power of the See also:crown had been that financial difficulties were continually compelling the See also:sovereign to summon parliaments . The estates had interfered perpetually in all the details of governance, by means of the power of the See also:purse . Edward IV., first among English sovereigns, had been able to dispense with parliaments for periods of many years, because he did not need their grants save at long intervals . Henry was in the same position; by strict See also:economy, by the use of foreign subsidies, by the automatic growth of his revenues during a time of peace and returning prosperity, by See also:confiscation and forfeitures, he built himself up a financial position which rendered it unnecessary for him to make frequent appeals to parliament . Not the least fertile of his expedients was that regular exploitation of the law as a source of See also:revenue, which had already been seen in the time of his father-in-law . This part of Henry's policy is connected with the name of his two extortionate " fiscal judges " Empson and Dudley, who " turned law and justice into rapine " by their See also:minute See also:inquisition into all technical breaches of legality, and the See also:nice See also:fashion in which they adapted the See also:fine to the See also:wealth of the misdemeanant, without any reference to his moral See also:guilt or any regard_for extenuating circumstances . The king must take the responsibility for their unjust doings; it was his coffers which mainly profited by their See also:chicane . In his later years he See also:fell into the vice of hoarding See also:money for its own See also:sake; so necessary was it to his policy that he should be free, as far as possible, from the need for applying to parliament for money, that he became morbidly anxious to have great hoards in readiness for any possible See also:day of financial stress . At his death he is said to have had 1,800,000 in hard See also:cash laid by . Hence it is not See also:strange to find that he was able to dispense with parliaments in a fashion that would have seemed incredible to a 14th-century king . In his whole reign he only asked them five times for grants of See also:taxation, and three of the five See also:requests were made during the first seven years of his reign . In the eyes of many men parliament lost the main reason for its existence when it ceased to be the habitual provider of funds for the ordinary expenses of the realm . Those who had a better conception of its proper functions could see that it had at any See also:rate been stripped of its See also:chief power when the king no longer required its subsidies . There are traces of a want of public See also:interest in its proceedings, very different from the anxiety with which they used to be followed in See also:Plantagenet and Lancastrian times . Legislation, which only incidentally affects him, is very much less exciting to the ordinary See also:citizen than taxation, which aims directly at his See also:pocket . It is at any rate clear that during the latter years of his reign, when the time of impostures and rebellions had ended, Henry was able to dispense with parliaments to a great extent, and incurred no unpopularity by doing so . Indeed he was accepted by the English people as the benefactor who had delivered them from anarchy; and if they murmured at his love of hoarding, and cursed his inquisitors Empson and Dudley, they had no wish to See also:change the Tudor rule, and were far from regarding the times of the " Lancastrian experiment " as a lost See also:golden age . The present king might be unscrupulous and avaricious, but he was cautious,527 intelligent and economical; no one would have wished to recall the regime of that " crowned See also:saint " Henry VI . Nevertheless when the first of the Tudors died, on the 21st of See also:April 1509, there were few who regretted him . He was not a monarch to rouse See also:enthusiasm, while much was ex- Henry pected from his brilliant, See also:clever and handsome son ym Henry VIII., whose magnificent presence and manly vigour recalled the See also:early prime of Edward IV . Some years later England realized that its new king had inherited not only the See also:physical beauty and strength of his grandfather, but also every one of his faults, with the See also:sole exception of his tendency to sloth . Henry VIII. indeed may be said, to sum up his character in brief, to have combined his father's brains with his grandfather's passions . Edward IV. was selfish and cruel, but failed to become a See also:tyrant because he lacked the See also:energy for continuous work . Henry VII. was unscrupulous and untiring, but so cautious and wary that he avoided violent action and dangerous risks . Their descendant had neither Edward's sloth nor Henry's moderation; he was capable of going to almost any lengths in pursuit of the gratification of his ambition, his passions, his resentment or his See also:simple love of self-assertion . Yet, however far he might go on the road to tyranny, Henry had sufficient cunning, versatility and power of cool reflection, to know precisely when he had reached the edge of the impossible . He had his father's See also:faculty for gauging public opinion, and estimating dangers, and though his more venturous temperament led him to See also:press on far beyond the point at which the seventh Henry would have halted, he always stopped short on the hither See also:side of the gulf . It was the most marvellous See also:proof of his ability that he died on his See also:throne after nearly See also:forty years of autocratic rule, during which he had roused more enmities and done more to change the See also:face of the realm than any of the kings that were before him . But it was long before the nation could estimate all the features of the magnificent but sinister figure which was to dominate England from 1509 to 1547 . At his See also:accession Henry VIII. was only eighteen years of age, and, if his character was already formed, it was only the attractive side of it that was yet visible . His personal beauty, his keen intelligence, his scholarship, his love of See also:music and the arts, his kingly ambition, were all obvious enough . His selfishness, his See also:cruelty, his ingratitude, his fierce hatred of See also:criticism and opposition, his sensuality, had yet to be discovered by his subjects . A suspicious observer might have detected something ominous in the first See also:act of his reign—the See also:arrest and See also:attainder of his father's unpopular ministers, Empson and Dudley, whose heads he flung to the people in order to win a moment's See also:applause . Whatever their faults, they had served the house of Tudor well, and it was a See also:grotesque perversion of justice to send them to the See also:scaffold on a See also:charge of high See also:treason . A similar piece of cruelty was the See also:execution, some time later, of the earl of See also:Suffolk, who had been languishing long years in the See also:Tower; he was destroyed not for any new plots, but simply for his Yorkist descent . But in Henry's earlier years such acts were still unusual; it was not till he had grown older, and had learnt how much the nation would endure, that judicial See also:murder became part of his established policy . Henry's first outburst of self-assertion took the See also:form of See also:reversing his father's thrifty and peaceful policy, by plunging into the midst of the continental wars from which England had been held back by his cautious See also:parent . The See also:adventure was wholly unnecessary, and also unprofitable . But while France was engaged in the " See also:Holy War " against the See also:pope, See also:Venice, the emperor, and Ferdinand of Spain, Henry renewed the old claims of the Plantagenets, and hoped, if not to win back the position of Edward III., at least to recover the duchy of See also:Aquitaine, or some parts of it . He See also:lent an See also:army to Ferdinand for the invasion of See also:Gascony, and landed himself at See also:Calais with 25,000 men, to See also:beat up the northern border of France . Little good came of his efforts . The Spanish king gave no assistance, and the northern See also:campaign, though it included the brilliant See also:battle of the Spurs (See also:August 16th, 1513), accomplished nothing more than the See also:capture of See also:Tournai and Therouanne . It was soon See also:borne in upon Personal rule . Contlneatal projects of Henry Vlll . King Henry that France, even when engaged with other enemies, was too strong to be overrun in the old See also:style .
Moreover, his
See also:allies were giving him no aid, though they had eagerly accepted
his great subsidies
.
With a sudden revulsion of feeling Henry
offered peace to France, which King See also: The See also:queen See also:dowager, Margaret Tudor, aided by a party that favoured peace and alliance with England, was strong enough to See also:balance the See also:faction under the duke of See also:Albany which wished for perpetual war and asked for aid from France . W With the peace of 1514 ended the first period of King Henry's reign . He was now no longer a boy, but a See also:man of twenty-three, with his character fully See also:developed; he had gradually sey got rid of his father's old councillors, and had chosen for himself a minister as ambitious and energetic as himself, the celebrated See also: |