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his own right to the throne, though it would have puzzled the most acute controversialist to discover in what that right consisted. Parliament, therefore, contented itself with declaring that the

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Henry VII. from an original picture in the National Portrait Gallery. inheritance of the crown was to 'be, rest, and abide in King Henry VII. and his heirs,' without giving any reasons why it was to be so. As far as the House of Lords was concerned the atten

1 Abbreviated genealogy of Henry VII. and his competitors :

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1486

345

HENRY VII. AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES dance when this declaration was made was scanty. Only twentynine lay peers were present, not because many of the great houses had become extinct, but because some of the principal Yorkist peers had been attainted, and others had been left without a summons. In the quieter times which followed this slur upon them was removed, and the House of Lords was again filled. On January 18, 1486, Henry married Elizabeth. This marriage and the blending of the white and red rose in the Tudor badge was Henry's way of announcing that he intended to be the king of both parties.

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Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII.: from an original
picture in the National Portrait Gallery.

2. Maintenance and Livery.-Henry could not maintain himself on the throne merely by the support of the nobility. The middle classes, as in the days of Edward IV., called out for a strong king, and were ready to overlook violence and cruelty if only order could be secured. Henry was shrewd enough to know that their aid was indispensable, and, Lancastrian as he was, he adopted the policy of the Yorkist kings. Economical and patient, he might succeed where Edward IV. had partially failed. He had no injuries to avenge, no cruelties to repay. He clearly saw that both the throne and the lives and properties of the middle classes were rendered insecure by maintenance and livery-the support given by

the great landowners to their retainers, and the granting of badges by which the retainers might recognise one another, and thus become as it were a uniformed army ready to serve their lords in the field. Against these abuses Richard II. had directed a statute, (see p. 281) and that statute had been confirmed by Edward IV. These laws had, however, been inoperative; and Henry, in his first Parlia ment, did not venture to do more than to make the peers swear to abandon their evil courses.

3. Lovel's Rising. 1486.—In 1486 Lord Lovel, who had been one of Richard's ministers, rose in arms and seized Worcester. Henry found warm support even in Yorkshire, where Richard had been more popular than elsewhere. At short warning a 'marvellous great number of esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen' gathered round him, and the rebellion was easily put down.

Tudor rose (white and red): from the gates of the Chapel of Henry VII.

Lovel escaped to Flanders, where he found a protector in Margaret, the dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard III. Before long a new attack upon Henry was developed. For the first time an English king had to ward off danger from Ireland.

4. Lancaster and York in Ireland. 1399-1485. Since the expedition of Richard II. no king had visited Ireland, and the English colonists were left to defend themselves against the Celtic tribes as best they might. In 1449 Richard, Duke of York, who had not at that time entered on his rivalry with Henry VI., was sent to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant (see p. 319) where he remained till 1450, and gained friends amongst both races by his conciliatory firmness. In 1459, after the break-up of his party at Ludlow (see p. 326), he appeared in Ireland in the character of a fugitive seeking for allies. Between him and the English colony a bargain was soon struck. They gave him troops which fought gallantly for him at Wakefield, and he, claiming to be Lord Lieutenant, assented to an act in which they asserted the complete legislative independence of the Parliament of the colony. The colony, therefore, became distinctly Yorkist. Its leader was the Earl of Kildare, the chief of the eastern Fitzgeralds or Geraldines, the Earl of Desmond being the chief of the Geraldines of the West. Between them was the Earl of Ormond, the chief of the Butlers, the hereditary foe of the

1487

LAMBERT SIMNEL

347

Geraldines, who, probably merely because his rivals were Yorkist, had attached himself to the Lancastrian party. All three were of English descent, but all three exercised the tribal authority of an Irish chief, and were practically independent of English control. Ormond fought at Towton on the Lancastrian side, and was executed after the battle. Family quarrels broke out amongst his kindred, and for the time Kildare was supreme in the English Pale (see p. 265).

5. Insurrection of Lambert Simnel. 1487.-Kildare and the colonists had every reason to distrust Henry, but to oppose him they needed a pretender. They found one in the son of an Oxford tradesman, a boy of ten, named Lambert Simnel, who had been persuaded to give himself out as the Earl of Warwick, who, as it was said, had escaped from the Tower. In 1487 Simnel landed in Ireland, where he was soon joined by Lord Lovel from Flanders, and by the Earl of Lincoln, of the family of De la Pole,1 whose mother, Elizabeth, was the eldest sister of Edward IV., and who had been named by Richard III. as his heir after the death of his son (see p. 342). Lincoln and Lovel, after crowning Simnel at Dublin, crossed to Lancashire, taking with them the pretender, and 2,000 trained German soldiers under Martin Schwarz; as well as an Irish force furnished by Kildare. Scarcely an Englishman would join them, and on June 16 they were utterly defeated by Henry at Stoke, a village between Nottingham and Newark. Lincoln and Schwarz were slain. Lovel was either drowned in the Trent or, according to legend, was hidden in an underground vault, where he was at last starved to death through the neglect of the man whose duty it was to provide him with food. Simnel

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was pardoned, and employed by Henry as a turnspit in his kitchen.

6. The Court of Star Chamber. 1487.-Nothing could serve Henry better than this abortive rising. At Bosworth he had been the leader of one party against the other. At Stoke he was the leader of the nation against Irishmen and Germans. He felt himself strong enough in his second Parliament to secure the passing of an act to ensure the execution of the engagements to which the lords had sworn two years before (see p. 345). A court was to be erected, consisting of certain specified members of the Privy Council and of two judges, empowered to punish with fine and imprisonment all who were guilty of interfering with justice by force or intrigue. The new court, reviving, to some extent, the disused criminal authority of the king's Council, sat in the Star Chamber at Westminster. The results of its establishment were excellent. Wealthy landowners, the terror of their neighbours, who had bribed or bullied juries at their pleasure, and had sent their retainers to inflict punishment on those who had displeased them, were brought to Westminster to be tried before a court in which neither fear nor favour could avail them. It was the greatest merit of the new court that it was not dependent on a jury, because in those days juries were unable or unwilling to give verdicts according to their conscience.

7. Henry VII. and Brittany. 1488-1492.-Henry VII. was a lover of peace by calculation, and would gladly have let France alone if it had been possible to do so. France, however, was no longer the divided power which it had been in the days of Henry V. When Louis XI. died in 1483, he left to his young son, Charles VIII., a territory the whole of which, with the exception of Brittany, was directly governed by the king. Charles's sister, Anne of Beaujeu, who governed in his name, made it the object of her policy to secure Brittany. She waged war successfully against its duke, Francis II., and after he died, in 1488, she continued to wage war against his daughter, the Duchess Anne. In England there was a strong feeling against allowing the Duchess to be overwhelmed. At the beginning of 1489 Henry, having received from Parliament large supplies, sent 6,000 Englishmen to Anne's assistance. Maximilian-whose hold on the Netherlands, where he ruled in the name of his young son, Philip (see p. 337), was always slight-proposed marriage to the

1 So called either because the roof was decorated with stars or because it was the room in which had formerly been kept Jewish bonds or 'starres.'

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