Chapter I

THE EARLY TUDORS.

What manner of man was this, and wherein lay the secret of his strength? Is recourse necessary to a theory of supernatural agency, or is there another and adequate solution? Was Henry's individual will of such miraculous force that he could ride roughshod in insolent pride over public opinion at home and abroad? Or did his personal ends, dictated perhaps by selfish motives and ignoble passions, so far coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few? Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor history. It cannot be answered by pæans in honour of Henry's intensity of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices and lamentations over the woes of his victims. The miraculous interpretation of history is as obsolete as the catastrophic theory of geology, and the explanation of Henry's career must be sought not so much in the study of his character as in the study of his environment, of the conditions which made things possible to him that were not possible before or since and are not likely to be so again.

The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of England to the canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of Parliament to confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy. When Henry IV. confirmed this Act, he introduced a clause specifically barring their contingent claim to the English throne. This limitation could not legally abate the force of a statute; but it sufficed to cast a doubt upon the Beaufort title, and has been considered a sufficient explanation of Henry VII.'s reluctance to base his claim upon hereditary right. However that may be, the Beauforts played no little part in the English history of the fifteenth century; their influence was potent for peace or war in the councils of their royal half-brother, Henry IV., and of the later sovereigns of the House of Lancaster. One was Cardinal-Bishop of Winchester, another was Duke of Exeter, and a third was Earl of Somerset. Two of the sons of the Earl became Dukes of Somerset; the younger fell at St. Albans, the earliest victim of the Wars of the Roses, which proved so fatal to his House; and the male line of the Beauforts failed in the third generation. The sole heir to their claims was the daughter of the first Duke of Somerset, Margaret, now widow of Edmund Tudor; for, after a year of wedded life, Edmund had died in November, 1456. Two months later his widow gave birth to a boy, the future Henry VII.; and, incredible as the fact may seem, the youthful mother was not quite fourteen years old. When fifteen more years had passed, the murder of Henry VI. and his son left Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor in undisputed possession of the Lancastrian title. A barren honour it seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne. His right to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor claim, and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to dispute it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which polluted his reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men seeking for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of Bosworth followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the first of the Tudors.

For the first time, since the Norman Conquest, a king of decisively British blood sat on the English throne. His lineage was, indeed, English in only a minor degree; but England might seem to have lost at the battle of Hastings her right to native kings; and Norman were succeeded by Angevin, Angevin by Welsh, Welsh by Scots, and Scots by Hanoverian sovereigns. The Tudors were probably more at home on the English throne than most of England's kings; and their humble and British origin may have contributed to their unique capacity for understanding the needs, and expressing the mind, of the English nation. It was well for them that they established their throne in the hearts of their people, for no dynasty grasped the sceptre with less of hereditary right. Judged by that criterion, there were many claimants whose titles must have been preferred to Henry's. There were the daughters of Edward IV. and the children of George, Duke of Clarence; and their existence may account for Henry's neglect to press his hereditary claim. But there was a still better reason. Supposing the Lancastrian case to be valid and the Beauforts to be the true Lancastrian heirs, even so the rightful occupant of the throne was not Henry VII., but his mother, Margaret Beaufort. England had never recognised a Salic law at home; on occasion she had disputed its validity abroad. But Henry VII. was not disposed to let his mother rule; she could not unite the Yorkist and Lancastrian claims by marriage, and, in addition to other disabilities, she had a second husband in Lord Stanley, who might demand the crown matrimonial. So Henry VII.'s hereditary title was judiciously veiled in vague obscurity. Parliament wisely admitted the accomplished fact and recognised that the crown was vested in him, without rashly venturing upon the why or the wherefore. He had in truth been raised to the throne because men were weary of Richard. He was chosen to vindicate no theory of hereditary or other abstract right, but to govern with a firm hand, to establish peace within his gates and give prosperity to his people. That was the true Tudor title, and, as a rule, they remembered the fact; they were de facto kings, and they left the de jure arguments to the Stuarts.