ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.

XVIII.—HENRY VII.

WITH Henry Tudor, or as he is generally called, from his title before his accession to the Crown, Henry of Rich- mond, we commence a new era in English history. He belongs essentially to that class of Founders to which we have already alluded, and of which the Conqueror, Henry II., and Edward I. were our three previous examples. But this inauguration of a new. state of society was not merely personal to Henry, or confined to England, but was the characteristic of the Age in general. The reign of Louis XI. had introduced a new epoch into French history, aud Ferdinand of Ara,goa was doing the same for the dominions over which he ruled, either in his own right or in that of his wife. All Europe was passing at very much the same time from the latest stage of feudalism to a sort of imperialism—from the government of the great nobles and the privileged corpora- tions of the middle-classes, to the central executive of the Crown, paramount either over or through the old constitutional and ad- ministrative organizations. Everywhere Courts and Royal Cabinets were superseding chartered institutions and customary law, and becoming practically the only authoritative exponents of the national wishesand policy. With such a revolution Diplomacy became natu- rally the chief agent in international relations, to which the preju- dices and the warlike or pacific dispositions of the different popula- tions were quite subordinated, and all statesmanship, even where it referred to the internal affairs of a particular country, was conducted in the spirit if not with a view to the interests of foreign diplomacy. Unfortunately, what the world thus gained in breadth of view, and superiority to national habits and prejudices, it lost in morality. Although the domestic statesmanship of the European rulers had not hitherto presented many features worthy of com- mendation, there was a certain restraining and modifying influence produced by the fact of the policy pursued being to a great degree the reflexion of popular feelings, and to a corresponding degree a subject of interest and consequent supervision on the part of the people. But the more complicated and professional character of the statesmanship which now succeeded was beyond the control and comprehension of the general public, and a national policy was replaced by the statecraft of a few Royal families or a few great ministers. And yet at the same time that it became thus personal in its character, it lost that sense of personal responsibility which is the great safeguard of high principle. Men who, if they had considered their acts in the light of personal honour, would have disdained to lie or betray a trust, did so without scruple when the sense of personality was merged in a vague professional agency. Their policy became more personal, while their conscience became a corporate one,—only another expression for no conscience at all.

It was into a world which was becoming thus revolutionized that Henry of Richmond was born, and of this new statemanship he became one of the most striking embodiments. From the first he seemed predestined to such a position, for he bad been brought up in a cosmopolitan school. He was born at Pembroke Castle in the early part of the year 1457, a few months after the death of

his father, Edmund Tudor ; and his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was at the date of his birth herself only a child of fourteen. He was born in the midst of civil convulsions, and was marked out by his family connections for a life of vicissitude and danger. On his father's side he was descended from the Royal family of France, on his mother's from that of England. Henry had, it seems a better title than he himself knew, the original legitimization of the Beauforta having been without any reservation of royal rights ; but strict titles, however useful in the formal announcement of pretensions, were practically of little use in those days, unless backed by external interests and personal character ; and Henry stood in that ambiguous position that circumstances might at any time give a weight to his person and pretensions quite irrespective of their exact legitimacy.

His personal appearance as King of England was somewhat remarkable. The offspring of a premature marriage, he was sickly in constitution, and probably had from the first within him the seeds of consumption. But his health seemed to improve as he grew up, and it was not till the last few years of his life that the badness of his constitution became painfully manifest. He was of full middle height ; and his body "lean and spare." His complexion was very fair ; his eyes were grey, and his hair thin. He was "of countenance merry and smiling, es- pecially in his communications," observes one of the chroniclers. From several anecdotes we gather that he had a quiet and dry humour, and that it was not difficult to excite him to laughter. His bearing on public occasions was peculiarly engaging, and the popular cry on his entry into York soon after his accession was, "King Henry ! King Henry ! Our Lord preserve us that sweet and well-favoured face ! " The late Mr. Bergenroth, who recently calendared for the English Government the State Papers at Siman- cas bearing on this reign, fully confirms this demeanour of Henry. "All foreign diplomatists," he says, "who had any business to transact with him, mention the vivacity of his expression, and especially the liveliness of his eyes. He liked to speak French, of which language he retained a perfect command to the end of his life. On the whole, he looked more like a Frenchman than an Englishman. lie did not sympathize with the peculiarly national mode of thinking, and had imbibed so little of English prejudice that he did not even hate the Scots. Henry would have very much liked to employ foreigners as his servants, but was afraid of hurt- ing the feelings of his subjects. He looked old for his years, but, as Pedro de Ayala observes, not older than might have been ex- pected, considering the cares and troubles he had undergone." That Henry should be un-English in his appearance and to a considerable extent in his feelings is not to be wondered at, con- sidering his origin and the circumstances of his early life. His father was the son of a Welshman and a Frenchwoman—Queen Catherine, the widow of Henry V.; he was born in Wales, and he passed the first fourteen years of his life in that principality, which then still preserved to a great extent its distinctive customs and feel- ings. The next fourteen years, during which his habits and modes of thought would be mainly formed, he spent in Brittany or in France. It was only at the expiration of that period, when he had attained an age at which the character of a man is con- sidered to be tolerably matured, that he became an inhabitant of England, and had any opportunity of being subjected to the in- fluence of English national characteristics ; for the Englishmen with whom he associated during his residence abroad could give him only the personal and partial impressions of exiles and con- spirators, and his natural adviser, his uncle Jasper Tudor, was himself a Welshman, and in a prolonged exile was losing any English habits and sympathies which he might have once acquired. It is no small testimony to his sagacity and superiority to circum- stances, that with such an early training, he acquired after his accession such a thorough knowledge of English feelings as never to outrage them, or to give his subjects the unpleasant im- pression that they were being governed by a foreigner. But while the bright and cheerful tone of Henry's temperament made him peculiarly accessible to men of every grade and of every degree of intelligence and capacity, the character of his in- tellect was such as to guard him against forming hasty impres- sions either of men or manners, and to prevent his falling under the slavery of early and daily associations, while it left to him all the advantages that might arise from viewing the scene of his future labours from a distance, and with the independent eye of a foreigner. His nature indeed was not an emotional one. Bright looks and cheerful manners, even when, as in his case, they were genuine symbols of character, do not necessarily imply excessive warmth of heart or depth of feeling. It would be probably doing injustice to Henry to call him absolutely cold

and unfeeling. His disposition, though not warm, was generally speaking kindly, and he certainly on some occasions displayed strong though seldom violent emotion. He has been accused of harshness and neglect in the case of his wife, and there is no rea- son to believe that there existed on his part any ardent feeling towards one who had been forced on him by the political neces- sities of his position. But Mr. Bergenroth, who is no friendly critic of Henry, declares that he has met with no instance of harshness or ill-treatment on his part towards the Queen. "On all public occasions," he says, "he showed her much consideration. Sometimes even scenes occur which prove that they were not wanting in cordiality towards one another. The impression that Queen Elizabeth made upon the Prior of Santa Cruz was that she was the most noble woman in England. He thought that she suffered under great oppression, and led a miserable, cheerless life. The oppressor, however, was not the King, but the Countess of

Richmond Henry," he continues, "was not an unfeeling father. He educated his children with great care. The death of Prince Arthur was a heavy blow to him." A contemporary ac- count, quoted by Mr. James Gairdner in one of his valuable introductions to the publications under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, describes the scene which ensued on the communication of the intelligence to the King by his con- fessor, and the sympathy and reciprocal support under their sorrow between the King and Queen there pourtrayed is very unequivocal. Mr. Bergenroth notes that, during the latter part of his life, Henry "kept Prince Henry constantly with him. Thcrugh be might have had political reasons for doing so, merely to prevent any communications taking place between him and the Spanish party, there is no doubt that he was also actuated by another and nobler motive, the wish to form the character and sharpen the intelligence of his son." Nor was Henry's severity towards the Princess Catha- rine after Arthur's death, according to an unfriendly Spanish am- bassador, greater, but less than she deserved by her conduct. There can, however, be no doubt that the tendency of Henry's temperament was towards coldness, and the position in which he was placed would naturally increase any such tendency. From his boyhood he led a life of danger and distrust. The Prince who for his own purposes kept him to-day at his Court, might for those purposes deliver him to-morrow into the hands of his enemy. The exiles with whom he associated might at any moment make their peace at home by betraying his confidence, if not his person. From the first he was involved in a mesh of political machinations, and was compelled to regulate every tone and act, and every thought, more or less by political considera- tions. That he should be able to preserve vivacity and cheerful- ness under such circumstances is astounding enough ; but it would be asking too much from a disposition naturally placid that it should in such case ripen into frankness and generosity.

However little such a temperament may be satisfactory in itself, there can be no doubt that it harmonized only too well with that diplomatic tone of the age, of which we have already spoken. Henry was not only born into, but seemed born especially for, such an epoch in society ; and while his character was by no means improved in a moral point of view by his contact with European diplomacy, yet in respect of intellectual ability as dis- tinguished from moral dignity, there are few instances of a career more remarkable, or, on the whole, more successful. In Ferdinand of Aragon he had no contemptible antagonist, indeed one of those master spirits, to contend on at all equal terms with whom is no mean achievement. And Henry had to conduct this contest at great disadvantage. Ferdinand's great rival was France, which under the recent rule of Louis XI. had threatened to absorb all its neighbours. Against this power be had looked for aid chiefly in an Imperial affi- ance, but he was not unwilling to employ the co-operation of Eng- land, though along with the other Princes of Europe he had fallen into the error of undervaluing its power and resources since the loss of its French provinces and its continual civil distractions. To Henry the alliance of Spain was very important, both in a personal and a national point of view. If he could cement that alliance by a marriage, he would be thus introduced at once into the greatest Marriage-group in Europe, and consequently obtain a position abroad which would react on his precarious position at home, and give it the stamp of assured legitimacy. At the same time, it would enable him to keep the power of France in check without having recourse himself to a war with that country, which he greatly desired to avoid. The English crave for revenge on France for the disastrous wars of the reign of Henry VI. had been revived by the encroaching policy of Louis, and it had become dangerous for any new possessor of the Crown to meet this feeling by a

As men, there is probably little to choose between Richard IH. and Henry VII. in point of morality. If Richard destroyed, or intended to destroy, his nephews, Henry (we can scarcely doubt) murdered the young Earl of Warwick under the forms of law, in order to satisfy the demands of Ferdinand of Aragon for greater secu- rity in the throne with which he was about to ally himself by marriage. Perkin Warbeck—whether he was an impostor or the real Duke of York—would, it seems, never have suffered death but for the significant silence which Ferdinand preserved on an appeal from Henry as to what should be his fate ; but he was executed, after an escape which seems to have been contrived by the King him- quasi-resort to irregular means by obtaining from a subsequent self, for the purpose of supplying a new motive for the severity. 'direct negative. Yet Henry felt that peace was essential for England at this moment, in order to afford time for the recruit- ing of her wasted resources, and the subsidence of the violent and anarchic feelings which had been created by a long continuance of -civil war. He dreaded on his own account the effect which any appeal to the old feudal array would have in increasing the already too great power of the large landowners ; and, like his ancestor, Henry of Anjou, he looked upon brute force as the last instrument -of policy to be resorted to, and as a very uncertain and coarse weapon. The tendency of a state of warfare, also, is to sus- pend or supersede the operation of regular law,—and law was with Henry (as with Edward I.) the favourite engine of policy, whether for right or wrong. If, then, he could play off Ferdi- nand against Charles of France, and Charles against Ferdinand, and yet keep from going to war himself with either, he would obtain for England a position which would conciliate public opinion at home, and create respect abroad. And in this, in the main, he succeeded. Ferdinand made him, during this contest of skill, endure not a few humiliations, to an unwise extent, indeed, for his own interests ; but Henry avoided war almost entirely, and when once he was forced by Ferdinand into hostilities with France, he managed to escape almost immediately from this imbroglio in a manner which left him unassailable on the point of treaty obliga- tions. The estimation in which he was held abroad is strongly attested by an Italian envoy. Like other great diplomatists, he sometimes, indeed, over-finessed, and towards the close of his life Ferdinand succeeded in lowering to a certain extent the .great position which he had acquired for England ; but it was the accident of the death of the Archduke Philip, on whom Henry had relied as his chief card against the King of Aragon, and the declining health and premature death of Henry himself, rather than any inferior sagacity in general policy, which gave .an appearance of disadvantage to the latter. For though pacific in his methods, as far as the action of this country was con- uerned, and unaggressive in his policy, Henry was by no means without pride and ambition for himself and the nation. His habit, indeed, of patient endurance, and of regarding everything in its ultimate rather than its proximate consequences, which must have been partly constitutional, partly induced by the circumstances -of his early life, rendered him insensible to transient personal humiliations, and capable of meanness in the prosecution of his ulterior ends, which seems almost incompatible with any sense of personal or royal dignity, and inconsistent with the possession of an elevated or even a royal mind. But the fact seems to be that with him, as with another of the Tudor Princes, the inter- mediate steps were so subordinated in their minds to the ends, that they dwelt only on the latter as a gauge of intellectual and moral character, and felt no sense of degradation in temporary rebuffs and humiliations, so long as the result placed them on a svantage-ground ; and their great and elevated general policy -seemed to draw away and absorb in itself that noble generosity -which is usually to be sought for in personal and special relations.

Closely connected with this peculiar temperament were the parsi- mony and avarice which are usually considered among the greatest blots in the Kingly character of both Henry VII. and his grand- -daughter Elizabeth. In Henry, no doubt, the habit began with the necessities of his early position ; but it was fostered by the ,patient calculation and self-restraint natural to his character. He had learnt that money was power, and he possessed for a long time so few other instruments of power, that it is not wonderful if he clung to this as the principal staff of his political existence. 'Through money he could secure or become independent of false or -doubtful friends, as well as countermine open enemies. Money -was an instrument of corruption, but was true, at any rate, to its possessor, if he only knew how to use it. Through money alone 'could he for some time hope to place himself on a level with the powerful princes of the Continent,—rich in vast possessions and in many subjects, but generally very straitened in pecuniary means. And by the accumulation of money in his own hands, he could be- 'come comparatively independent alike of the feudal parliament and of the privileged corporations. Money he must have, and money be managed to procure and to accumulate by just and by unjust means. He procured what he could through the medium of Parliament, as the most regular, legal, and therefore, in his point of view, safest mode. But when the Northern and Western insurrections warned him that even a constitutional tax might be unbearable to the mass of the population, he sought the aid of nominally voluntary but really forced benevolences from wealthy individuals, who thus became less dangerous from their diminished wealth, as they increased his own money-power. But he guarded even this

Parliament the very dangerous precedent of a legislative enforce- ment of the so-called voluntary promises of contribution. By

his inquisitions into titles and escheats to the Crown, and his heavy fines on great offenders against statutes which licence and circumstances had rendered a dead letter in their class, he added to the weight of his money-bags, and broke down still more the aristocratic predominance. "My lord," he said to the Earl of Oxford, who had entertained him at his seat with an ostentatious and illegal display of military retainers, "I must not suffer my laws to be broken in my presence; my Attorney-General must speak to you about this ;" and the result was a fine of 15,000 marks. One of the chroniclers tells us, "He did use his rigour only, as he said himself, to bring low and abate the high stomachs of the wild people, nourished and brought up in seditious factions and civil rebellions, and not for the greedy desire of riches or hunger of money " ; and though it is impossible to acquit Henry of the latter propen- sity, it is quite certain it was the overgrowth of a much wiser and nobler policy. But although a hoarder, Henry could spend freely when he thought his dignity or the occasion demanded it, and nothing could be more stately or magnificent than the Court pageants and ceremonials in which he sought to present before the eyes of his subjects the greatness of the Royal position.

Henry was in general, from temperament more than humanity, averse to blood .shedding, and though he was as unscrupulous as Richard himself, in such respects, when he deliberately thought that policy demanded it, he generally preferred having recourse to pecuniary fines, and thus he made the very insurrections and con- spiracies against him not only pay for their suppression, but become actual sources of revenue. These latter fines fell on the classes next below the aristocracy, and tamed the spirit of the upper middle-classes as effectually as his other policy did that of the great aristocracy. But with all this machinery of repression and amercement—just or unjust—there grew up a sense of general superintendence and protection for all classes indifferently, which gradually made a great impression on the spirit of the Nation. Even injustice assumed the form of Law,—and in the great majority of cases, where the machinery employed was unjust, though formally correct, the sufferers were known to be guilty of great offences against law and justice, if not in this, in other instances ; and public opinion rather exulted in the strong hand of the law having reached them at last, than sympa- thized in the unfairness with which they were treated. Law in name, at least, and Order in substance became once more paramount in England, and it was felt that to offend against either would bring down the certain vengeance of the Executive authority. Everything was systematic, and the very cheerful placidity of the King's countenance seemed an index of calm and tranquillizing providence. Content with creating the feeling that he was inexorable against transgressors of his laws, Henry often softened the hardness of the punishment in individual cases by subsequent gifts and preferments, and in all probability, in the great outcry against Empson and Dudley after his death which destroyed them, we find rather an echo of the feelings of the upper classes than of the nation at large. Henry was really his own Minister, and the only man whom he seems to have admitted to his confidence, was an ambassador of Ferdinand and Isabella, De Puebla, of whose services he could thus avail himself without arousing the jealousy of hislEnglish subjects. For it is to the credit of the sagacity of Henry, that without participating in the prejudices of the nation, he built his Government and his policy alike on a national rather than a personal basis, while he gradually modified the national sentiment itself, and educated his people into habits and feelings more consistent with the advancing civilization of the age.

Towards the close of his life, of fifty-three years, he seems to have lost to a great extent the cheerfulness and equableness of his temper, and to have exhibited much of the devout asceticism of his mother ; but the hand of Death was then already laid upon him, and mind and body were alike giving way.

As men, there is probably little to choose between Richard IH. and Henry VII. in point of morality. If Richard destroyed, or intended to destroy, his nephews, Henry (we can scarcely doubt) murdered the young Earl of Warwick under the forms of law, in order to satisfy the demands of Ferdinand of Aragon for greater secu- rity in the throne with which he was about to ally himself by marriage. Perkin Warbeck—whether he was an impostor or the real Duke of York—would, it seems, never have suffered death but for the significant silence which Ferdinand preserved on an appeal from Henry as to what should be his fate ; but he was executed, after an escape which seems to have been contrived by the King him- quasi-resort to irregular means by obtaining from a subsequent self, for the purpose of supplying a new motive for the severity.

If Henry did not commit all the acts of violence which are attn. buted to Richard, his band was stayed by policy and tempera- ment, rather than by principle. Neither was naturally cruel or bloodthirsty, but neither had much moral scruple when passion or policy seemed to incite to a crime. Henry was by far the cleverer and probably much the more frequent dissembler. Reserve and early circumstances had made him such. But Henry gave to even his crimes the colour and form of law, while Richard gave to even his justifiable acts the appearance of irregularity and violence. Between them as Kings there can be no comparison. Richard was one of the most unsatisfactory, and Henry one of the most skilful and far-sighted of our rulers. Richard reduced the Govern- ment and the Nation to the proportions of parties in a personal quarrel ; Henry substituted for personal pretensions and a pro- tracted civil crisis a national sentiment, a renovated people, and an assured state of tranquillity. Richard lost his crown and his life in a vain attempt to stem a feudal anarchy, Henry laid the founda- tions of the modern state of English society.