 CHAPTER XXI. THE BREAKDOWN OF GOVERNMENT UNDER HENRY VI. Although organized society continued to exist during the Wars of the Roses, the credit of this cannot be imputed to the Lancasterian administration. The framework of government existed but its force was gone. One condition of firm and orderly government is financial stability. This requisite, the administration of Henry VI, like that of the French monarchy before the Revolution, did not possess. Indeed the evil went further back. In the reign of Henry IV the meager revenue of the kingdom, estimated at an average of one hundred and six thousand pounds, generally sufficed just to cover the normal expenses of government. There could never have been anything but the barest surplus at the end of a year and any extraordinary expenditure for war was apt to cause a tremendous deficit so that the revenue of the next year would have to be anticipated. Such anticipations crippled the future government. In 1411, for instance, it has been calculated that the estimated revenue only brought in a little over forty-eight thousand pounds, while the expenditure was over sixty-four thousand pounds. In the reign of Henry V the French war caused a continual deficit. The average revenue, one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds net, was little larger than under the former king. Yet the wages of the English forces in France, if actually paid, would alone have absorbed ninety thousand pounds a year. The expenses of the campaign of Agincourt had not all been met at the death of Henry V. Thus the administration of Henry VI started with a load of debt and never got free from it. The French war which continued with intervals till 1453 was a bottomless gulf for the revenue of England. The French provinces themselves could make hardly any contribution. The Duchy of Guyenne in 1433 furnished towards its expenses only a little over seventy-seven pounds. In this year the treasurer of England Lord Cromwell furnished a most gloomy financial statement. He was able to rely on only thirty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty-four pounds for revenue, while the expenditure was fifty-six thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight. In addition the crown was in debt nearly one hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds. Even the king's household could not be properly maintained. A poem of fourteen fifty said that King Henry begot from door to door. The exaggeration contains a good deal of truth. As the administration became more disorganized the amount of revenue naturally tended to decrease. Between fourteen twenty-eight and fourteen fifty-four the average gross revenue of the crown was about eighty-four thousand pounds. Between fourteen fifty-four and fourteen sixty-one it was under fifty-nine thousand pounds. The difference was due in the second period to the absence of parliamentary grants. Although the government badly needed money it could not get it from parliament. Instead it had to rely on the old crown revenues, crown lands and the farm of the shire and on the customs which were levied at the same rate all through the rain. As the king was unable to live on his own without any subsidy from parliament the government had to resort to the bad principle of resuming alienated crown lands, that is taking back without compensation the portions of the royal estates which had previously been granted away. It had been doubtless a very unwise policy to give away the estates of the crown but to take them back again by a comprehensive and compulsory act of parliament would have caused a revolution in the social and economic life of the landed classes. The crown could not have stood the strain of such a shock. Accordingly the acts of resumption the first of which was passed in fourteen fifty were burdened with so many exceptions that they did little to replenish the revenues of the crown. Thus during the years between fourteen fifty four and fourteen sixty one the Lancastrian government was practically bankrupt not because the country lacked money but because the government was too weak to induce the people to contribute. Another evidence of the weakness and failure of the Lancastrian government is the breakdown of the legal system. It was an age of great litigiousness and yet respect for justice was not enforced. Men took justice into their own hands and became a law for themselves. Yet the country had good and learned judges, men like Yelverton, Littleton, Fortescue, and attorneys were so numerous that the crown and parliament in vain tried to restrict them. The central courts could not control the great lords and the local courts dared not. Poorer people were lawless too, the woods were often infested with robbers and traveling was unsafe. The stories of the dangers from robbers to which Queen Margaret was exposed in her wanderings prove at least that the age was familiar with the idea of public insecurity. The history of the robber, Roger Church, who was bailip of the Hundred of Blohfield and who had a regular band of Ruffians and Norfolk in 1452 is only one out of many other instances. Evidence of the breakdown of the legal system is scattered broadcast through the past and letters and may be gathered from other and less local sources of history. Even the crown itself or at any rate its advisers was not above our approach. The oath administered to judges obliged them to do justice even if the king by his letters or by word of mouth should order the contrary. Apparently when a lawsuit was coming on in a county court the sheriff might receive letters from the king ordering him to pack the jury with a view to obtaining a particular kind of verdict. Also the sheriff informed us that he hath writing from the king that he shall make such a panel to acquit the Lord Mullins. The dispute between the air mail and the air's general of the House of Barkley seems to have been carried on by intermittent private warfare from 1421 to 1475. The disputants had recourse to the law also but this did not prevent them from trying to settle it by the strong hand. The evils of livery and maintenance must often have reduced the courts held in the counties to a farce. At the sessions of Oyer and Terminer held on May 4th, 1451, at Walsam in Norfolk, Sir Thomas Tudnam and his ally John Hayden, lawyer, were indicted for wrongs done in the county at various times, and the said Tudnam, Hayden, and other oppressors of their set, come down thither as I understand with four hundred horse and more, and considering how their well-willers were assembled at their instance, it had been right jeopardous and fearful for any of the plaintiffs to have been present. The crown indeed was weak, the elements of disorder were strong, there was no governance. National defense was another duty which the government of Henry VI performed badly. The English empire in France was completely lost by 1453. The narrow seas were badly guarded. The libel of English policy contrasts the weakness of England on the sea in 1436 with the firm policy of Henry V. Where been our ship? Where been our swords become? The poet exclaims, and he gives as much needed advice to the king. Cherish, merchandise, keep the admiralty that we be masters of the narrow sea. But after the loss of the French provinces there was no improvement in English naval power. Even on the sea England now seemed hopeless. The expedition of the Norman Pierre de Brésil, which stormed and plundered Sandwich in August 1457, shows how feeble was English sea power. This happened at a time when there was no civil war at home. Warwick as admiral did something to re-establish English naval reputation, but the crown had no control over him. Among the sailors the government was not able to maintain discipline. In January 1450 Adam Mollins, Bishop of Chichester, sent down by the government to Portsmouth to pay the wages of Sir Thomas Curiel's men was murdered by the soldiers and sailors. Such men were not in a good condition to defend the country. A crowning proof of the feebleness of Henry VI's government is its total inability to deal promptly with the kentish rising of Jack Cade in 1450. The king had to fly to Kenilworth leaving the capital exposed to the insurgents. The weakness of the executive cannot be ascribed to the liberal constitutionalism of Henry VI. The Lancastrian experiment, limited constitutional monarchy, had no existence after the year 1437. At first it is true the monarchy was eminently constitutional. The council, which was the executive body of the crown, consisting of advisors and ministers of the king, was in the year 1404 nominated in parliament. That is to say, the members of council were appointed with the approval of parliament. From this year until the fifteenth year of the reign of Henry VI the councilors were regularly approved by parliament. In the first year of his reign they were formally appointed by statute. Thus during the first half of the Lancastrian period there was a definite correspondence between council and parliament. The council was a link between parliament and the king, and thus may be considered a forerunner of the modern cabinet system. But from the year 1437 King Henry VI began to nominate the council absolutely, without reference to the parliament. He was then just under sixteen years of age and was considered old enough to be his own master. From this time the close correspondence between council and parliament ceased. It became in fact as well as in name the king's council without responsibility to parliament. The result was disastrous to the crown. For the odium of unpopular measures and failures which would have fallen only upon the ministers if they had been responsible to parliament was gradually passed from the ministers to the king, whose mere servants they were. The dukes of Suffolk and Somerset are instances of ministers and councilors retained by the king against powerful and consistent opposition from a large section in parliament. The duke of York is an instance of a man eminent in the country and desired by a large number in parliament, yet excluded from the ministry and even from the council. It was from 1444 that Suffolk became chief minister of the king. That year saw the triumph of the policy of peace which Cardinal Henry Boford so strongly advocated. Suffolk was at the head of the embassy which carried through the peace with France and arranged the marriage of King Henry with the French princess Margaret. In 1447 the council chiefly under the influence or so men thought at the time of Suffolk put Humphrey Duke of Gloucester the king's uncle under arrest. On the 23rd of February Gloucester was dead. The good Duke Humphrey, the last of the king's council who was really popular in parliament and in the country. In the same year April 1447 died Cardinal Boford. Suffolk was left almost alone in the king's confidence and supreme in the council. The unpopularity of Suffolk is amply proved by the reports which were publicly spread abroad through the country against him and by the political palms which were written at the time of the loss of Normandy. As early as 1447 he felt it necessary to deny these reports in front of the council and to make an explicit defense of himself. The country as a whole would gladly have seen him retire from the council. But King Henry, perhaps through the influence of Queen Margaret, held to him all the more, raising him in 1448 from an Earl to a Duke. The impeachment of Suffolk in 1450, although perhaps prompted by Lord Cromwell, was enthusiastically taken up by the commons. But King Henry still went on acting as an absolute monarch and by his own advice and not reporting him to the advice of his lords, stopped the trial and sent Suffolk abroad. This led to the Duke's murder at sea, apparently an act not disapproved of in the country. King Henry's adherence to the Duke of Somerset was equally against the spirit of the Lancastrian experiment. The Duke of York in 1445 had concluded a period of not unsuccessful government in Normandy. In 1447 King Henry reappointed him for five years, but immediately, under the influence of Somerset, canceled the appointment. York was made lieutenant of Ireland so as to be out of the way. Somerset went to Normandy as lieutenant and was made Duke in 1448. His period of government was the most disastrous in the whole course of the Hundred Years' War. Then, after the great failure of English arms abroad and after the rebellion and trouble made by Jack Cade at home, York and Somerset both came back to England. There was no doubt which of them most people would have liked to see become the King's advisor. Somerset was thoroughly unpopular and York, owing to that unpopularity, gained the character of a popular champion. Yet Henry seems not to have hesitated for a moment. Somerset was made constable of England and from that time till his death had the ear of the King. There is no need to pursue this theme further. King Henry never consented to remove Somerset from the Council and to admit York, except when compelled by force of arms. But any revival of the King's power saw Somerset again, chief advisor. If Henry had acted constitutionally, if he had dismissed the minister who was disliked and have given his confidence to the other, the Duke of York would have had no excuse for rebellion and no one in the country would have had any excuse for following him. The administrative system of the country was unsound. The legislative system was in no better condition. Parliament was poisoned at the fountainhead. The election of members was frequently corrupt. This evil was at first largely due to interference from local magnates, but the crown itself was not above exercising a sinister influence. The election of borough members, although the franchise was often monopolized by a comparatively small oligarchy of the town, was probably the freest part of the parliamentary system. County elections were adversely affected like everything else by the evil of livery. Henry IV did what he could to amend matters. In 1406 an important statute was passed to the effect that the Knights of the Shire should be elected freely in the county court without regard to any pressure from without, and that as a guarantee of free election, the return of the successful candidate's name should be made on an indenture signed with the names and bearing the seals of all who took part in the election. This law was specially intended to prevent the sheriff from making a false return under pressure from some great man. It would also tend to prevent pressure from the crown. But to judge from the names given in the subsequent indentures, the number of electors cannot have been large, as few as eight sometimes appended their seals. Thirty was a large number and appears only in the most populous counties. Very occasionally the number rose to forty. A small body of voters might easily be subjected to outside pressure from men like Tuttonham and Hayden with their four hundred bravos. Still the indentures before the year fourteen thirty show that all classes of people took part in the elections, down apparently to simple yeoman. Of course many more persons would often take part in elections than those who actually sealed the indentures. Notwithstanding that by statute all were bound to add their seals, a return signed by a few to represent all the rest was accepted as valid. In fourteen thirty a change was made in the qualification for the county franchise which must considerably have diminished the number of voters. Hitherto elections had taken place in full county court. To the county court or shire moat everyone had the right of coming who was a freeholder or above that rank. Below freeholders who could come personally were the vilains who were represented by the four best men and the reeves from each manner in the county. But a statute of fourteen thirty enacted that only men who had a forty shilling freehold should be qualified as electors. This law must have cut the vilains entirely out of elections and must also have excluded all yeoman whose land had an annual value of less than forty shillings. The object of this restriction was to make the elections more orderly. The statute stated that the election of members of parliament had often been carried through by the rabble. This is no doubt true. Still, the smaller the number of voters, the greater might be the chance of undue influence from some high and mighty source. In the same spirit an act was passed in fourteen forty five stating that no one below the degree of night should be elected member for the shire. Thus the whole yeoman class was cut out of the body that might supply members of parliament. The restriction was probably no cause of grief to the yeoman and it may have made no actual change in the class of men returned before or after fourteen forty five. But it was not a change in the spirit of that constitutionalism which has been so often credited to Henry the sixth. Interferences in elections by the crown itself were by no means unknown. In fourteen oh four the writ of summons from Henry the fourth following a precedent said by Edward the third ordered that no lawyers should be returned as members to the parliament of that year which accordingly has since been known in history as the unlearned parliament. In fourteen fifty nine after the discomfort sure in flight of the Yorkists at Ludford a parliament was summoned to Coventry where the opponents of the king's party were formally a tainted. The commons in this case were returned by the sheriffs after the receipt of previously letters from the crown naming the persons who were to be elected. When such a cynical violation of all parliamentary liberty was carried out it seems hardly sufficient to cite the origination of money grants in the commons as a significant proof of the position which the House of Commons had already won under the constitutional rule of Lancaster. Another breach of privilege of parliament is the imprisonment of Thomas Young member for Bristol for proposing in the parliament of fourteen fifty one that the Duke of York should be declared heir to the crown. There was nothing treasonable or unlawful in such a proposition as York was undoubtedly the heir presumptive in default of any issue to Henry and Margaret who were still childless after five years of married life. The privilege of parliament are effectually to a preserved young from suffering for making a proposition not unlawful though distasteful to the king but the constitution was violated. Young had to go to the tower. It is not enough to reply that the Yorkist princes acted unconstitutionally to the condemnation of the House of York does not imply the acquittal of the House of Lancaster and of section thirty one section thirty two of the Wars of the Roses by Robert Balmain Moat. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami chapter twenty two the work of Edward the fourth. The House of Lancaster fell because it failed to govern the kingdom and to keep order. The claim of the House of York was accepted as being likely to lead to peace order regular administration. Such peace and order were found on the whole under the tuner monarchs. Did the House of York in its short period of power give firm governance to the great historian of the English Constitution answers this question in the negative. England found no sounder governance under Edward the fourth then under Henry the sixth. The court was led by favorites. Justice was perverted. Strength was pitted against weakness. Riots, robberies, forcible entries were prevalent as before. The House of York failed as the House of Lancaster had failed to justify its existence by wise administration. Yet although much unconstitutional conduct can be imputed to the House of York it is not so easy to find instances of weak or incompetent administration. If attention be concentrated on the reign of Edward the fourth it will be found to be in the last twelve years a reign of comparative peace and prosperity as indeed was the reign of his brother Richard the turmoil in whose mind did not much disturb the even life of his subjects. The reign of Edward the fourth must be divided into two periods. The first is from his succession as king on March 4th 1461 to October 1470 when he had to fly to Flanders leaving King Henry the sixth to enjoy a brief period of restoration at the hands of the Earl of Warwick. The second period is from April 1471 when Edward once more and finally regained his kingdom to his death at Westminster on April 9th 1483. It is during this first period that there is found the lack of governance which Bishop Stubbs applies to the whole reign. During the second period peaceful if not constitutional government was certainly found. It is unnecessary to repeat again the story of the years 1461 to 1470 the troubled years of Edward the fourth. When the Lancastrian party was still strong in the north and the west of England when the Northern castles still held out and the Scottish army was frequently in occupation of portions of the English soil. The young and inexperienced King Edward fresh from the rough life of the camp with the two powerful Neville family as his chief support was not in a position to put an end to all the ills which had been felt under his predecessor. So the country remained unsettled in all the remote parts and a number of disturbances took place culminating in the rising of Robin of Reedsdale. The plot of the Earl of Warwick was successful. King Edward had to flee the country. Far different was the state of affairs after the battles of Barnett and Tuxbury when he was once more reestablished in his kingdom. The Lancastrian line was extinct. The House of Neville was laid low. King Edward had learned much from his exile. Instead of the careless soldier depicted by Decomene he was now the prudent monarch of the new school which was rising in western Europe on the ruins of feudalism to embody the independence of the national states. Edward the fourth like Louis the 11th belonged to that new monarchy whose raison d'être and whose philosophy of life had been laid down forever by Machiavelli and the Prince. Edward had learned by his mistakes and his misfortunes he was resolved never again to go upon his travels. His strong if ruthless rule gave England that internal order and that external independence which all nations demand for their sovereign governments. This too was the service of the early Tudor kings. They were autocrats ruling with the approval of the country subject to certain limitations implied by this approval. Edward the fourth was a monarch of the same sort. He laid down the lines along which the Tudors followed not consciously indeed but because the conditions of the age demanded that policy from any monarch who would keep his throne. Six distinct ways may be noted in which Edward the fourth directed his energy for the governing of England. He strengthened the administration of the law. He encouraged the rise of a new nobility personally attached to the crown. He kept the expenditure and the revenue of the government at a low but adequate figure. He summoned few parliaments. He conducted the affairs of England abroad peacefully with a backing of armed force but mainly by a clever diplomacy. He encouraged trade and commerce by all the means then known to the crown. In these ways King Edward is a good type of the new monarchy. The Tudors trod in his paths. It was necessary for the law courts to show great firmness if the local disorder which had been such an evil under the Lancastrians was to be suppressed. Edward's methods were arbitrary, calculated to put down disturbers of the peace but without sufficient regard to those broad and general principles of justice which are the safeguard of personal liberty when the executive government grows strong. The great danger from King Edward's policy was that the executive exercised influence over the judiciary. This was an undoubted evil which has always to be guarded against but at the same time it had the effect of suppressing disorder. The times were rough and required rough measures. The ordinary law of the land had been emptied of most of its force under Henry VI. Edward IV used special tribunals which would not feel the territorial influence of disturbers of the peace. Such a tribunal was the court of the High Constable which under the administration of John Tiptoff Earl of Worcester became notorious for its severity. In a patent of 1462 King Edward authorized Tiptoff to hear all charges of high treason and to decide them even summarily, plainly without noise and show of judgment on simple inspection of the fact. But the great butcher of England was killed in 1470 and by that time the court of the High Constable had done most of its bloody work. From 1471 to the end of his reign executions were infrequent. The trial of Clarence in 1478 was a public scandal but few felt regret at his fate. The worst feature in the legal history of the time was the use of torture. Even if this was begun under Henry VI, Edward IV would not stand excused. Yet it is in the earlier unsettled period, up to 1470, that instances of the use of torture occur. The law did not err on the side of weakness, only in the more remote districts of England can it be shown that the practice of livery and maintenance still went on. But even here the Yorkist kings anticipated the Tudor reforms. Edward IV set up the Council of Wales, a prerogative council, with special powers to deal out summary justice on the disturbed Welsh march. This court, which had much the same constitution and scope of action as the more famous Council of the North established in 1437, lasted through the Tudor period until the long parliament abolished it in 1641. The royal progress in 1484 of Richard III in the North parts is another instance of the interest of the Yorkist kings in preserving order in the most turbulent districts of England. He seems to have accomplished much, and in the North of England he was certainly strong in the affections of the people. The Council of Wales was not the only way in which Edward IV anticipated the legal system of the Tudors. The court of Star Chamber, often ascribed to the act of III Henry VII, sat in King Edward's reign, being a convenient means of enforcing order when the local courts were weak or the king's subjects too strong. Every monarch gathers round him an aristocracy to support his position and to supply him with administrators and governors. Edward IV used such of the old nobility as had been faithful to his house, and he drew upon the class of Gentry for a new nobility to be faithful to the crown which had conferred its rank. The Woodvilles, although a Lancastrian family, were tied to the crown by the marriage of the king. Edward gave them his confidence, and they proved worthy of it. They were a new family when he distinguished them, but through the great marriages which he arranged, they soon numbered no less than eight peerages. Another family, the Herbert's, were raised to the earldom of Pembroke. There had been a barony in the Birchier family under the Lancastrians, but Edward IV raised their status and multiplied their titles. They became one of the capable official families of the Yorkist and the Tudor periods. The nobility under the Yorkists assumed more and more the character which it bore later in the sixteenth century. The great quasi-royal houses like the Beauforts and the Hollens became extinct. The crown benefited by the addition of forfeited lands. The rest of the nobility took a lower position, with a sufficient degree of equality among themselves to prevent particular houses raising factions to divide the kingdom. Light taxation and moderate expenditure were characteristics of the new monarchy, whether Yorkists or Tudor. The Lancastrians had failed to live of their own. Edward IV managed better. His expenditure was not high. His demands for financial help from parliament were infrequent. Without any rise in the rate of contribution, the receipts from customs, although they fluctuated considerably, automatically increased as commerce developed. The crown lands augmented by forfeitures from nobles attainted in the Wars of the Roses brought in larger sums than formerly. Extraordinary revenue was raised by the outrageous levying of benevolences, which falling as they did upon a comparatively few wealthy people seemed to have been received without unpopularity in the country as a whole. The subsidy in the pension received from Louis XI by the terms of the Treaty of Piquigny in 1475 further added to the royal treasure and relieved the finances of the government. Edward's private trading ventures were another source of wealth. The total revenue, including the French pension, was not high, being between the years 1472 and 1483 of an average amount of 95,000 pounds gross. Yet King Edward made this suffice. He left at his death a considerable fortune. His borrowing, excluding benevolences, was on a moderate scale. The total amount of loans not paid off at the end of his reign being calculated at 29,000 pounds. There is no modern government of any standing whose loan capital is only one-third of its revenue. In his economical administration, Edward IV was like Henry VII and Elizabeth. This characteristic of Yorkists and tutors was by no means unpopular with the country. King Edward summoned few parliaments throughout his reign and his record of legislation is mainly on the subject of commerce. In 1465 the king had been voted tonnage and poundage for life, except for the abort of war with France in 1475, he had seldom again to apply to the estates for money. Throughout his long reign of twenty-one years only six separate parliaments were summoned, their sessions were short, and the work they were called on to do was quickly finished. Sometimes years passed without any parliament meeting. There was none between May 1468 and October 1472, between 1475 and 1483 the sitting of parliament occupied only forty-two days. It has been said that the reign of Edward IV is the first in English history in which no statute was passed to increase the liberty of the subject. But the country acquiesced in the abeyance of parliament, for what the people wanted was a cessation from civil turmoil, so that commerce and ordinary occupations might go on uninterrupted. Henry VII adopted the same attitude toward parliament. Practically all his useful legislation was done in the early years of his reign. The people were getting orderly government, and for the time they were contented. In foreign affairs Edward IV anticipated the policy of Henry VII. The less blood he drew, the more he took of treasure. Each monarch took a great military expedition to France, and each returned home with financial subventions in lieu of military honors. Henry VII's Treaty of Etop in 1492 much resembled Edward IV's Treaty of Piquigny in 1475. Both monarchs pursued a policy of peace abroad. They turned their back on the Hundred Years' War with all its hopeless ideals. They thought no more of a realm across the Channel. They recognized that England was an island kingdom, and that her genius lay in commerce and on the sea. In foreign affairs they were content to play a part, not with campaigns and battles like the medieval kings, but by diplomacy and treaties. England had by nature a commanding position. She dominated the great maritime highway that lay from Flanders to the Bay of Biscay, and led on to Spain and the Mediterranean. The alliance of England was equally valuable to Flanders, to France, and to Spain. England, courted on every side, had no need at this period to enter into expensive foreign wars. She could rise to greatness again without embroiling herself in Europe. This was clearly understood by Edward IV, by Henry VII, by Woolsey, by Elizabeth. They spent little of England's treasure or her men on the fields of Europe, so that the energy of her people took other directions, at home in England and abroad, along the paths of the sea. In their strong support of commerce, Edward IV and Henry VII were alike. The new monarchy was indeed a sort of bourgeois monarchy, popular with all citizens, careful of the peace, careful of national defense, taking a personal interest in all affairs of trade. The great benefit conferred by Edward IV on English commerce was the renewal of the connection with Flanders and Burgundy. The dukes of Burgundy had been the allies of England in the middle period of the Hundred Years War, from 1415 to 1435. But in 1435, Duke Philip had made peace with Charles VII of France, and thereafter, the English connection was broken off. The Burgundian domains included Flanders, so that the loss of the alliance had a bad effect on the export of wool from England to that flourishing country. Calais itself was in continual danger of being taken by the Duke. But with the accession of Edward IV, the Flemish connection was gradually renewed. The marriage of Edward's sister Margaret, with Duke Charles the Bold in 1468, made the link stronger. It had been preceded in the same year by a treaty guaranteeing freedom of commercial intercourse between England and Flanders for thirty years. This connection was a great asset for England. The accession of Henry VII interrupted good relations for a time, as Margaret, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, naturally kept her Yorkist predilections. But at length, the energetic and persistent diplomacy of Henry VII was crowned with success. With the Treaty of the Great Intercourse in 1496, the Flemish commercial connection was once more renewed to the great joy of the English merchants. Edward IV died on April 9th, 1483, in his 41st year, after a ten-day illness. He had a low fever, which he is said to have contracted originally in the French Expedition of 1475, and which was now much aggravated by dissipation. Philippe de Comines describes him as being in his youth the most beautiful man of his time, but afterwards he grew very corpulent. Clearly, however, he had a gift for ruling and thoroughly understood his people's temper. For this reason, he is to be classed as a successful monarch under whom England prospered. End of section 32. Section 33 of the Wars of the Roses by Robert Balmain-Mowat. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Negami. Conclusion. The Accession of Henry VII. When Edward IV had finally re-established himself by the Battle of Tuxbury, Jasper Tudor, who had been Earl of Pembroke before his attainder, took his nephew, Henry Tudor, the fourteen-year-old Earl of Richmond, away with him by sea, from Pembrokeshire to safekeeping in France. Stress of wind compelled them to land, not in the domains of King Louis XI, but in those of Francis II, the last Duke of Brittany. Here Henry lived and grew up to manhood, waiting for an opportunity to make himself King of England. Henry Tudor, owing to the extinction of all the males of the House of Lancaster, was now the heir of John of Gaunt. His mother was the Lady Margaret Beaufort, only child of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swinford. The name of Tudor came from his father, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who was the son of Sir Owen Tudor, a Welsh knight of an old family, and Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V and mother of Henry VI. Edmund, Earl of Richmond, had died toward the end of 1456, about two months before the birth of his son, on January 28th, 1457. Henry, who was thus born Earl of Richmond, was brought up by his uncle Jasper, the Earl of Pembroke. The Tudors followed the House of Lancaster and rendered energetic, though ineffective, service on the Welsh March and in the interior of Wales. The founder of the House, old Owen Tudor, was executed by the Yorkists at Hereford after the Battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461. Young Henry was among the garrison which surrendered at Harlech after seven years siege in 1468. He was taken up to London and was put under the guardianship of the new Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert. During the brief restoration of Henry VI in 1470 and 71, Henry, now 14 years of age, was restored to the care of his uncle, Jasper Tudor, who after the ruin of the Lancasterian cause carried him safely as has been already noticed to Brittany. Thither, after the death of the last prince of the direct male line of Lancaster, came the remnants of the party, the strong spirits who would not or could not go back and make their peace with the Yorkists. The Duke of Brittany, remembering the old alliance of his house without a Lancaster, protected Henry and lent him money for any enterprise. In England he had friends like John Morton, Bishop of Ely, who kept him primed with information. Although occasionally threatened with capture, owing to the diplomatic pressure of Edward IV or Richard III, he escaped his enemies, and so was able to seize the critical moment for a return to his native land. Henry had watched the declining fortunes of the House of York after the death of Edward IV. He had heard of the murder of the boy king Edward V and of the young prince Richard. He noted the rise of Richard III to power, the muttering among the nobles and the apathy of the people. In October 1483 he planned to join the Duke of Buckingham, who was rising in rebellion in his favour in the south of England. The rising was a failure, and Henry who had sailed from Brittany and appeared off Pool Harbour turned straight back again. But by 1485 the time had come. The energy and capacity of King Richard had not made England love him or forget his crimes. Henry got his force ready. The French government under the regent Anne of Beaujeu openly favoured his aims and gave troops. With a mixed English and French force of two thousand men, he started from Arfleur on August 1st 1485 and sailed direct for Milford Haven, a region where the Tudor family had always great interest. He pushed northwards by Haverford West to Cardigan and Shrewsbury, many Welshmen joining his standard as he went along. At Markett Bosworth in Leicestershire on August 22nd he met the army of Richard III. The forces were of the usual size during the Wars of the Roses. Henry had about five thousand men, Richard perhaps somewhat more. The action of Sir William Stanley who had brought up a strong force from Cheshire and Lancashire nominally to support King Richard decided the day in favour of Henry. With the battle the crown was also won. The country as a whole seemed indifferent to the result and accepted the new king without further difficulty. Henry VII was wise enough to rule England in the way his immediate predecessors had done, so that the change of dynasty scarcely interrupted the even course of life along which England had now for fifteen years been making her way. End of section 33 recording by Pamela Nagami M.D. in Encino, California December 2019. End of the Wars of the Roses 1377-1471 by Robert Balmain Mowat