Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History (13 page)

Nevertheless, these incidents convinced Henry of the dangers of isolation. It was not enough to overawe, satisfy, or neutralize his own subjects; he needed friends abroad. After all, he had used France as a base from which to launch his own rebellion against Richard III and his enemies had found support in Burgundy, France, Scotland, and the Holy Roman Empire. Henry began by trying to win over the king of France, Charles VIII (1470–98; reigned 1483–98), but the latter was not interested. Henry responded in 1489 by throwing his support to the rebellious nobles of Brittany, claiming the throne of France for himself, and, in 1492, launching an invasion from Calais. This got the French king’s attention.

The result was the Treatyresult was the Treaty of Étaples, by which Henry agreed to withdraw in return for a subsidy of £5,000 for 15 years.
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Similarly, from 1493 to 1496, Henry used trade embargoes against Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire to persuade them to withdraw their support for Perkin Warbeck. Next, Henry set out to secure his northern flank. King James IV of Scotland (1473–1513; reigned 1488–1513) had provided Warbeck with valuable support and an easy route into England. Henry won him over by offering a diplomatic marriage with Henry’s daughter, Margaret (1489–1541). Truces in 1497 and 1499 were solidified in the optimistically titled Treaty of Perpetual Peace of 1502; the marriage took place the next year. While this alliance did not prevent future antagonism with the Scots, it did link the two royal houses. That would lead to a Stuart accession in England after the death of the last Tudor in 1603.

But Henry’s greatest diplomatic coup was his alliance with Spain. In the 1480s Spain’s situation was not unlike that of England: after a period of division and weakness, it had just been united under the rule of Ferdinand of Aragon (1452–1516; reigned 1479–1516) and Isabella of Castile (1451–1504; reigned 1479–1504). This new dynasty needed friends too, especially against its powerful northern neighbor, France. So, in 1489, England and Spain signed the Treaty of Medina del Campo, by which Henry promised (1) military support against France and (2) his son, Arthur, in marriage to Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536). Since the two royal children were well under age, the marriage did not take place until November 1501. The Tudor court put on weeks of festivals, feasts, tournaments, and dancing. Well might Henry have been in a celebratory mood, for by 1501 Spain had acquired a great empire, thanks to the explorations of Columbus (1451–1506) and others. Henry’s courtship of this up-and-coming country looked to be a fabulous success.

Unfortunately, Prince Arthur died five months after his marriage. This jeopardized the Spanish alliance, the cornerstone of Henry’s foreign policy. Fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, King Henry had another son, also named Henry (1491–1547), whom he offered to Catherine. But Ferdinand, a cagey negotiator, demanded the return of Catherine’s dowry. Spain was now a major power and might hope for a more advantageous match; moreover, the Tudors, down to their last heir in the male line, did not look like such a good investment as they had done a decade earlier. The death of Queen Elizabeth early in 1503 further weakened Tudor prospects. But if Ferdinand was a hard bargainer, so was Henry VII. He stopped payment of Catherine’s allowance of £1,200 a year and stripped her of her household. Now a widower himself, he began to negotiate with other European powers for an alternative, not only for his son but for himself. In the end, Henry’s own death in April 1509 settled the issue. At the urging of his council, the new king, Henry VIII (reigned 1509–47), decided to go ahead with the marriage to Catherine. After a papal dispensation allowing Henry to marry his brother’s widow, the most fateful wedding in English history took place in June 1509. Thus, by the end of Henry VII’s reign, it appeared that England was surrounded by, if not friends, then, at least, relatives. Henry VII’s successful foreign policy, combined with his cultivation of good relations with the Church, ensured that, at the accession of his son, the new dynasty would have no great external enemies. What about its internal situation?

At this point, it might be useful to say something about the structure of English government at the end of the fifteenth century. At its center was, of course, the king, “the life, the head, and the authority of all things that be done in the realm of England.”
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In some sense, the whole kingdom was his property and a strong king set the agenda for his government, but this did not mean that his power was absolute. It is often popularly assumed that a medieval or early modern king’s word was law, that what he said “went,” and that there was little room for disagreement. This assumption is probably based upon bad historical films and our modern experience of living under powerful, omnipresent governments, with their multiple departments, vast military and naval forces, and “high-tech” methods of surveillance and coercion. English royal government during the early modern period was not, in fact, like that. First, it was small: perhaps 1,500 officials in Henry VII’s reign. Secondly, as we have seen, it was also poor: early modern kings were almost invariably in debt and had to ask Parliament’s permission to raise taxes. In part because it was so small and poor, in part because no one expected much from it, the responsibilities of early modern government were much fewer than those of its modern equivalent. There was no standing army, no Federal Bureau of Investigation or Metropolitan Police Force, no Internal Revenue Service or national postal service, no Medicare or National Health Service or government loans for deserving students.

Because his government was small and poor, a wise king sought the advice and cooperation of his greatest subjects. In times of emergency he might do so via Parliament, as Henry VII did seven times (1485, 1487, 1489, 1491, 1495, 1497, and 1504), but for day-to-day matters he turned to the king’s council. This consisted, before Henry VII’s reign, mostly of important landowners and department heads, the majority of whom were peers or bishops. Because so many wanted the honor of counseling the king, this body was often vast and unwieldy. As a result, late medieval and early modern sovereigns tended to rely upon a trusted inner circle of about 10 to 20 such councilors. By the middle of the sixteenth century the Tudors would institutionalize this smaller, more effective group as the “Privy Council.” In the meantime, the king’s council dealt with a wide variety of matters: the administration of royal lands, taxation and justice in the localities, the arbitration of disputes between powerful men, diplomacy, and the defense of the realm. Since the late Middle Ages it had also met as a court of law in a room at Westminster Palace known for its ceiling decoration as the “camera stellata” or
Star Chamber
. The Court of Star Chamber dealt with such matters as riot, conspiracy, forgery, defamation, and perjury. It was more efficient than other courts because it did not have years of tradition – or many privileges for the accused – to get in the way of swift deliberation. As a higher court, it could rule against the wealthy and powerful when lower courts might not dare; as a court of equity it was not strictly bound by the law. As a result, its justice could be swift – and arbitrary, which explains the modern, sinister, associations of its name. Royal decisions which had emerged from debate in council were later framed as Orders in Council, in part to demonstrate that the king had consulted with the most prominent people in the realm.

The king’s council was considered part of his court or household. At its most basic level, the household provided for simple domestic needs: food and drink, linen, fuel, etc. for the king, his family, those of his servants who lived at court, and guests. At the English court these functions were fulfilled by a department known as the Household Below Stairs, presided over by a great officer called the lord steward. But a court was far more than a domestic establishment. It was the epicenter of national political, social, and cultural life as well as the great stage upon which the theater of monarchy was acted. It was in the splendid halls and corridors of the king’s palaces at Westminster and elsewhere that political business, influence, and intrigue were carried on; the socially prominent (and those ambitious to be so) amused themselves and just “hung out”; the leading authors, artists, and musicians sought patronage and set the trends of fashion; and the sovereign staged splendid processions, feasts, and entertainments designed to remind his guests, foreign and domestic, that he was God’s lieutenant on earth. The Chamber, presided over by the lord chamberlain, oversaw the court’s ceremonial and artistic life. It employed numerous gentlemen, drawn from every part of the realm, whose job was to give their attendance in the court’s public rooms, especially the Hall (where the king’s courtiers and officers were fed) and the Presence Chamber (where he could be seen on his throne). Because everybody who thought themselves anybody flocked to these rooms seeking the sovereign’s attention and favor, late medieval kings found that they had little privacy. As a result, in the 1490s Henry VII created a new room and set of officials beyond the Presence Chamber called the Privy Chamber, to which he could retreat in search of peace, relative solitude, and, perhaps, greater safety from assassination. Unfortunately, the admiring throng pursued him and his successors even here. To provide additional security, as well as to increase the magnificence of his court, Henry also built on Yorkist precedent by creating a royal bodyguard, the yeomen of the guard.

Early in the Middle Ages most of the king’s business had been conducted by household servants acting in his name on an ad hoc basis. That is, the king’s treasure was stored in chests in his Chamber. His weaponry and munitions for war were purchased by the department which normally supplied his furniture, the Great Wardrobe. If he wished to make diplomatic contact with another ruler, or convey his commands to a powerful magnate in the localities, he sent a court officer. While this still happened, by the end of the fifteenth century many of these functions had “gone out of court.” That is, they were performed by separate departments with their own heads and chains of command according to fixed procedures. Among these offices was the Chancery, originally the king’s writing office. Here, the lord chancellor, often a bishop, kept the Great Seal of England, which was affixed to important documents such as acts of parliament and grants of land. But by 1485, the lord chancellor’s primary function was to preside over the court of Chancery, which administered equity jurisdiction where the common law (see below) was inadequate or in which a strict application of its rules would lead to a miscarriage of justice. That is, the court of Chancery existed to correct injustice stemming from the strict application of the law. No wonder the lord chancellor was called “the keeper of the king’s conscience.” Chancery clerical functions had been taken over by the office of the Privy Seal, which was a less elaborate royal seal attached to grants of offices and pensions. The Privy Seal office, staffed mostly by clerks, was the clearing house for general government business.

The office which stored and accounted for the king’s money was the Exchequer, presided over by the treasurer (from the sixteenth century, “lord treasurer”). This office combined the functions of a private banker, tax-collecting agency, accountancy firm, and a law court to oversee taxation disputes. It received its name from the checkered cloth, like a checkerboard, upon which, during the Middle Ages, amounts of money received were marked by counters – necessary because many sheriffs, responsible for receiving and submitting taxation, were illiterate. By the late fifteenth century the procedures of the Exchequer were becoming stultified, full of pointless tradition and red tape. As a result, it took years to pass an account and it was virtually impossible for the king to know at any given time how much money he had. In response, Edward IV and Henry VII began to turn back to their household officers, in particular the treasurer of the Chamber, to handle their finances. By the early 1490s the Chamber was receiving over 90 percent of the king’s revenue and its treasurer was the most important financial officer in the kingdom. This was a less public system of government finance, but it gave these late fifteenth-century monarchs greater flexibility and more control than that afforded by the “official” government departments.

In addition to the courts of Chancery and Exchequer, there were in London common law courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas, the former for cases, both civil and criminal, in which the Crown was involved, the latter for civil suits, especially those involving property, contract, or debt, between subjects. Common law was the body of law that had evolved out of judicial precedent and custom. It was uncodified, as opposed to statute law, which was created by acts passed by Parliament and approved by the king. As we have seen, Parliament consisted of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, both of which met at Westminster. Every male peer had the right to sit in the Lords, as did bishops and, before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, abbots of great monasteries. This provided an upper house of perhaps 100 to110 members. The House of Commons may sound, from its title, more representative of the English people, but it was, in reality, only marginally so. There were two members of parliament or MPs (the abbreviation only applies to those in the lower house) for every county. These were called “knights of the shire.” In addition, every major borough, i.e., city or town, was supposed to be represented by up to two members. This yielded about 300 members in 1500, but by the end of the Tudor period in 1603 England’s expanding borough population would be represented by 460 members.
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That number would become more or less frozen thereafter. This meant that towns which grew into major cities in the seventeenth century might have no MP, while parliamentary constituencies which declined to few or no inhabitants retained theirs, leaving their landlords with the power to simply name their members. For example, the original site of the old city of Salisbury, called Old Sarum, was by 1500 a nearly vacant hilltop, but it still had the right to send two MPs to Westminster. As a result, its owner simply appointed those members, who, presumably, followed his orders. Such a member was said to be in his patron’s pocket – hence the term “pocket borough.”