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CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS.

FRANCE. Charles VIII.; Louis XII.
SCOTLAND. James III.; James IV.

SPAIN. Of Navarre-Catherine and her husband, John of

Albret.

Of Castile and Leon-Ferdinand V. (the Catholic);
Joan and her husband, Philip I. of Austria.

Of Arragon-Ferdinand II. (the Catholic).

EMPERORS OF GERMANY.-Frederick III.; Maximilian I.
POPES.-Innocent VIII.; Alexander VI.; Pius III.; Julius II.

§ 1. Person and character of Richard III.-§ 2. Political retrospect. Changes in the social system.-§ 3. Discovery of printing, and its influence on society. Caxton.-§ 4. Accession of Henry VII., and his marriage with Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.§ 5. Discontent and insurrections in the country. Hostility of the Duchess of Burgundy.-§ 6. Proceedings of Henry. The Battle of Stoke. Lambert Simnel, the Pretender. Henry confiscates the estates of the rebels.-§ 7. His contests with France, and his pettifogging propensities.-§ 8. His secret league with Charles VIII, and pretended invasion of France for the sake of raising money. Peace of Estaples.-§ 9. Perkin Warbeck, the Pretender. Recog nised by the Duchess of Burgundy and numerous others. Proofs of the imposture. § 10. Perkin's invasion of England. Marries Lady Catherine Gordon.-§ 11. Cornish rebellion.-§ 12. Flight and capture of Perkin. His trial and execution.-§ 13. Marriage and death of the king's son, Prince Arthur.-§ 14. Marriage of the Princess Margaret. Oppressions of Dudley and Empsom. - § 15. Henry's demands extorted from the Archduke Philip of Castile and his wife Joanna.§ 16. His matrimonial intrigues. His grasping and avaricious spirit. His death.

A.D. 1485.] PERSON AND CHARACTER OF RICHARD. 407

§ 1. THE enmity of the successful faction pursued the unhappy Richard even beyond the grave. No surer avenue was found to the favour of the mean-souled Richmond than vituperation of the Yorkist king, for Henry considered it an acknowledgment of his Lancastrian descent when any one calumniated the rival line. It is therefore difficult to come to a true decision on all parts of the conduct of the vanquished of Bosworth, or even on circumstances connected with him more easily known. The hostility of his traducers descended even to malignant representations of his personal appearance, and tradition has transmitted him to us as a monster of deformity no less than of crime. It would be fortunate for him if we could diminish his delinquencies in the same degree as his bodily defects, for the exaggerations of malice are now reduced to the fact that there was a slight inequality in the height of his shoulders, and that his stature was below the knightly standard. But indubitable proofs remain that he shared in the comeliness of feature for which his brother was celebrated, and the gentlemen who fell or fled before his sword in the last of his encounters bore witness to his activity and skill.

§ 2. The transition from mediæval to modern times is dated from this reign. The characteristic of the former period is the predominance of the feudal or aristocratic element, while of the latter the prevailing feature is the supremacy of the monarchical principle, modified, in our country, by the admixture of popular power. It was not, however, in this country alone that the great change took place. A similar madness to that which excited the Wars of the Roses raged for many years among the landed nobles in France, till, when Louis XI. died, and his spirit transmigrated into our equally ignoble Henry VII., the strength of that armed feudalism which had counterbalanced the crown, was found to be entirely broken. Dukes, marquises, and earls were no longer the half-royal and almost entirely independent

potentates they once had been. In both countries they had been impoverished by extravagance and confiscations, by mutual wars and public executions, till their numbers were too insignificant to give much weight even to their combination, if that had been possible. They had alienated the hearts of their dependents by their selfishness and pride; and the people at large, finding protection no longer in the castle of the lord, to which their predecessors had had recourse, nor in the clergy, who had sold themselves to the despotism against which it was at one time their office to contend, turned, as their last resource, to the central power, and looked for safety from their former friends, the baron and priest, to an authority which mastered them all. It was a consolation to the insulted peasant that the same degradation was now extended to his oppressor which pressed upon himself. We have now in fact reached the commencement of the despotic period of our annals, and the whole course of our succeeding history consists in the gradual steps by which we emerged into a purer

state.

This, then, is the fitting opportunity for a survey of the ground we had already traversed, and the position to which we had attained. Villeinage, or personal serfdom, though never expressly repealed, had gradually died out. The want of coin experienced by the greatest landowners-when a gentleman with many farms and stately castles found it very often impossible to put more than a few shillings into his purse-convinced them of the great superiority of a rent paid in money over the services of any number of bondmen; and in the same way, in order to facilitate the sale of goods, markets and fairs were encouraged all over the land, and the proprietor of stacks of corn and herds of cattle was enabled to convert them into a more portable form. Another method of getting out of difficulties was discovered by breaking the entails of the vast estates, by which the dignity and influence of the great families were supported, and so rendering them

A D. 1485.]

CHANGES IN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM.

409

capable of sale. The effect of this was to throw open large tracts of land to the wealth and enterprise of the rising middle class, and a new sort of landowner began to take his place in public affairs, free from the feudal traditions and obligations of his predecessors in possession, and infusing among his fellow-proprietors a portion of the love of peace and order which he had acquired in his commercial pursuits.

Enormous estates were still in the hands of the clergy, and debarred from all other classes by the inalienable nature of ecclesiastical lands. The portions, however, exposed to public competition by the breakage of entails, and the impoverishment and forfeitures of the greater nobles, were perhaps sufficient to absorb the capital and labour at that time in the country; but already, and long before this, hostile feelings were raised by such means of general usefulness being restricted to the maintenance of so many thousand lazy and unproductive spiritual persons and useless mendicants, and parliament had on several occasions suggested the confiscation of a share of this ill-employed wealth to the national exchequer. But as yet the idea was only in its infancy, and needed time and advanced political knowledge to bear its proper fruits. Parliament also at this date, besides asserting its right to the repeal of grievances before the granting of supplies, had secured the inspection of how the money it voted was employed, and the responsibility of ministers by the tremendous machinery of impeachment. It had obtained the formal surrender by the king of the right of exacting benevolences or forced loans, and nothing seemed left to Henry VII. for the building up of the monarchical superiority but the prostration of the peers, and the undefined and dreadful weapon which bore the hated name of the royal prerogative.

§3. Against this, and all the other arts and subtleties of tyrannical ambition, the people were furnished at this time. with a "sword and shield," in the discovery of printing. In the year 1451 the art had been perfected by Faust and his

colleagues in Germany, and in 1474 Caxton-a name sacred to liberty as to literature and religion-introduced it here. The first volumes he printed bore the impress of the prevailing taste. Theology and chivalry were the two subjects on which the intellect of the period had been employed, and so strongly did they act upon each other, that it is difficult to distinguish between the legends of the saints and the romances of the knights. St. Peter is made as true a chevalier as King Arthur; and this was a natural result, from the taste of the audience to whom those compositions were addressed. Manuscripts were so scarce, and of course so dear, that they were limited to the rich; and when we speak of a book being published before this date (such as the poems of Chaucer or the chronicles of Froissart), we must remember the difference between publication then and now. When such a work as the "History of the Noble, Right Valiant and Right Worthy Knight Paris and of the Fair Vienne," came into a man's possession, it was not only a gift for kings, but even the reading of it was a treat which enraptured a whole court. The Black Prince refreshed himself from the toils of war by having romances of this sort read at his bedside. When he had heard the whole, the volume would pass through the circle of his attendants, and then find its way to some other noble's castle, performing its circuit like a favourite novel among the subscribers to a circulating library. Religious books, in the same way, were read aloud by monastic brothers appointed for that purpose, and literary fame we may conclude was very slow when it had so weary a journey to pursue.

But when Caxton, by a turn of the press, had superseded the labours of many scribes, and produced, in large and clear letters, a composition which the fashionable handwriting of the time had rendered obscure, literature descended into quarters it had never visited before. Ignorant monks listening to the lazy mumblings of their Reader, and equally ignorant

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