federating with him are imprisoned, and some executed".

Henry's eldest son, Arthur, dies, April 2; to avoid repaying the fortune she had brought, Henry contracts his widow to his surviving son Henry, a boy of eleven years of age

A.D. 1503. The pope (Alexander VI.), at the request of the king, limits the right of sanctuary *.

A.D. 1504. A parliament meets at Westminster, (Jan. 25,) of which Edmund Dudley, the great agent of Henry's extortions, is chosen speaker. The earl of Suffolk and his adherents are attainted, and their estates forfeited, a grant of £40,000 made y, and further sums raised by a benevolence."

Corporations forbidden to make ordinances without the assent of the chancellor, [19 Hen. VII. c. 7]2.

The severity of former statutes against beggars and vagabonds mitigated, [c. 12].

Persons giving or receiving liveries to be prosecuted either in the Star-chamber, in the King's Bench, or before the Council, [c. 14].

The privileges of the merchants of the Hanse confirmed by parliament, [c. 23].

W

Among them was Sir James Tyrell, popularly considered the murderer of the young princes in the Tower; but the charge was not brought forward until after his death.

Persons who had taken sanctuary and had left it, were not allowed to avail themselves of it a second time, as had till now been the practice.

This was instead of the aids due on knighting his eldest son and marrying his eldest daughter, (see vol. i. p. 178). Henry refused to receive more than £30,000, being, as the act says, "right well pleased with their loving offer."

* See p. 51.

The king empowered, on his own authority, to reverse acts of attaindera, [c. 28].

A.D. 1505. Christ's College, Cambridge, founded by Margaret, countess of Richmond.

A.D. 1506. The archduke Philip, being driven by bad weather into Weymouth, Jan. 26, is conducted to court, and obliged to agree to a new commercial treaty much less favourable than the existing one for his subjects, and also to deliver up the earl of Suffolk C.

b

A.D. 1507. Henry falls ill; he releases a great number of persons confined in the London prisons for small debts; but at the same time allows Empson and Dudley, with the assistance of false witnesses (called promoters) and corrupt jurors, to plunder the rich, who are either ruined by excessive fines for pretended offences, or driven to give large sums by way of composition d.

A.D. 1508. The Scots carry on a naval war against

a The reason given is, that certain petitioners for such reversal would otherwise have a long time to wait, the parliament drawing to its close, and the king, "for the ease of his subjects," not intending to call another.

b See p. 124.

c Suffolk was induced to return on the promise that his life should be spared; he was at once sent to the Tower, and died there.

d The lord mayors and other magistrates of London suffered severely from these men: Sir William Capel (mayor in 1503) paid in 1495 a fine of £1,000; he was now accused of negligence in the discharge of his office, and refusing to pay a composition of £2,000, was imprisoned in the Tower until Henry's death; Sir Thomas Knesworth (mayor in 1505) paid £1,400; Sir Lawrence Aylmer (mayor in 1499) paid £1,000, and was likewise committed to prison; sheriffs and aldermen also were heavily fined, and one of the latter (Christopher Hawes) Stow says "was so long vexed by the said promoters, that it shortened his life by thought-taking."

the Portuguese, under the conduct of three brothers of the name of Barton e.

A.D. 1509. Henry dies at Richmond, April 21; he is buried in the chapel he had built at Westminster, May 10.

The Portuguese had several years before seized a ship belonging to the father of the Bartons, and refusing to restore it, his sons obtained letters of reprisal, but the contest soon degenerated into piracy.

HENRY, the second son of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, was born at Greenwich, June 28, 1491. In his fourth vear he was created duke of York; on the death of his elder brother he became prince of Wales, and he had many important offices bestowed on him in his boyhoodf. In 1509, on the death of his father, he became king.

The first act of the new king was the popular, but unjust one, of condemning Empson and Dudley, the agents of his father's extortions, while he retained the fruits of their iniquity; his second, the marriage with Katherine of Arragon, his brother's widow, from which such important consequences afterwards arose. He was

He was made lord lieutenant of Ireland Sept. 11, 1494, Sir Edward Poynings being named his deputy two days after.

soon engaged in war, was successful against both France and Scotland, and mainly from his vast, though illgotten treasure, aided by the talents of Wolsey 8, established an influence for England on the continent which

This able but unprincipled man was born at Ipswich in 1471, his father being perhaps, as is commonly asserted, a butcher, but evidently wealthy. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and found patrons in Thomas, marquis of Dorset, and Dean, archbishop of Canterbury, whose chaplain he became. He also served

as chaplain to Sir John Nanfan, the treasurer of Calais, and shewed so much aptitude for secular business, that he was by him recommended to Henry VII., who employed him in embassies.

On the accession of Henry VIII. Wolsey continued at court, accompanied the king to France, received high promotion in the Church, (he held at different times the sees of Tournay, Lincoln, Winchester, and York, and the dignity of cardinal and papal legate,) and for several years appeared to dispose of the affairs of Europe almost at his pleasure, although he once fell into disgrace through the failure of an attempt to raise money independently of the parliament, and had to surrender his newly-built palace of Hampton Court to make his peace. He induced the king alternately to league with and to make war on the emperor and the king of France, his great object being to secure the papacy for himself. His schemes, however, were foiled, and his temporizing conduct with regard to the king's divorce at last produced his own ruin.

Though he had received the royal permission to do so, Wolsey was, in 1529, accused of an offence against the statutes of Præmunire for acting as papal legate, was stripped of most of his vast possessions, and sent to reside on his diocese of York. He now began to devote himself to those duties of a Christian bishop which he had before neglected, but was soon apprehended on a charge of treason, and died at Leicester on his way as a prisoner to London, Nov. 29, 1530. Wolsey had always patronized learning, and had bestowed large estates (some of them obtained, however, by the suppression of small monasteries) on a college at Oxford, which he called Cardinal's College; the estates, through the neglect of certain legal formalities, fell into the hands of the Crown, but they were re-granted a few years after, when the college of Christ Church, Oxford, was founded by Henry VIII.; not, however, on the magnificent scale which the cardinal had intended, as his foundation was for a dean and a subdean, 100 canons, 13 chaplains, 10 professors and tutors, beside singing men and choristers, and other officers, making in the whole 186 persons.