Chapter VII: Part 7

HENRY VII. (1457-1509), king of England, was the first of the Tudor dynasty. His claim to the throne was through his mother from John of Gaunt and Catherine Swynford, whose issue born before their marriage had been legitimated by parliament. This, of course, was only a Lancastrian claim, never valid, even as such, till the direct male line of John of Gaunt had become extinct. By his father the genealogists traced his pedigree to Cadwallader, but this only endeared him to the Welsh when he had actually become king. His grandfather, Owen Tudor, however, had married Catherine, the widow of Henry V. and daughter to Charles VI. of France. Their son Edmund, being half brother of Henry VI., was created by that king earl of Richmond, and having married Margaret Beaufort, only daughter of John, duke of Somerset, died more than two months before their only child, Henry, was born in Pembroke Castle in January 1457. The fatherless child had sore trials. Edward IV. won the crown when he was four years old, and while Wales partly held out against the conqueror, he was carried for safety from one castle to another. Then for a time he was made a prisoner; but ultimately he was taken abroad by his uncle Jasper, who found refuge in Brittany. At one time the duke of Brittany was nearly induced to surrender him to Edward IV.; but he remained safe in the duchy till the cruelties of Richard III. drove more and more Englishmen abroad to join him. An invasion of England was planned in 1483 in concert with the duke of Buckingham's rising; but stormy weather at sea and an inundation in the Severn defeated the two movements. A second expedition, two years later, aided this time by France, was more successful. Henry landed at Milford Haven among his Welsh allies and defeated Richard at the battle of Bosworth (August 22, 1485). He was crowned at Westminster on the 30th of October following. Then, in fulfilment of pledges by which he had procured the adhesion of many Yorkist supporters, he was married at Westminster to Elizabeth (1465-1503), eldest daughter and heiress of Edward IV. (Jan. 18, 1486), whose two brothers had both been murdered by Richard III. Thus the Red and White Roses were united and the pretexts for civil war done away with.

Nevertheless, Henry's reign was much disturbed by a succession of Yorkist conspiracies and pretenders. Of the two most notable impostors, the first, Lambert Simnel, personated the earl of Warwick, son of the duke of Clarence, a youth of seventeen whom Henry had at his accession taken care to imprison in the Tower. Simnel, who was but a boy, was taken over to Ireland to perform his part, and the farce was wonderfully successful. He was crowned as Edward VI. in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, and received the allegiance of every one--bishops, nobles and judges, alike with others. From Ireland, accompanied by some bands of German mercenaries procured for him in the Low Countries, he invaded England; but the rising was put down at Stoke near Newark in Nottinghamshire, and, Simnel being captured, the king made him a menial of his kitchen.

This movement had been greatly assisted by Margaret, duchess dowager of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., who could not endure to see the House of York supplanted by that of Tudor. The second pretender, Perkin Warbeck, was also much indebted to her support; but he seems to have entered on his career at first without it. And his story, which was more prolonged, had to do with the attitude of many countries towards England. Anxious as Henry was to avoid being involved in foreign wars, it was not many years before he was committed to a war with France, partly by his desire of an alliance with Spain, and partly by the indignation of his own subjects at the way in which the French were undermining the independence of Brittany. Henry gave Brittany defensive aid; but after the duchess Anne had married Charles VIII. of France, he felt bound to fulfil his obligations to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and also to the German king Maximilian, by an invasion of France in 1492. His allies, however, were not equally scrupulous or equally able to fulfil their obligations to him; and after besieging Boulogne for some little time, he received very advantageous offers from the French king and made peace with him.

Now Perkin Warbeck had first appeared in Ireland in 1491, and had somehow been persuaded there to personate Richard, duke of York, the younger of the two princes murdered in the Tower, pretending that he had escaped, though his brother had been killed. Charles VIII., then expecting war with England, called him to France, recognized his pretensions and gave him a retinue; but after the peace he dismissed him. Then Margaret of Burgundy received him as her nephew, and Maximilian, now estranged from Henry, recognized him as king of England. With a fleet given him by Maximilian he attempted to land at Deal, but sailed away to Ireland and, not succeeding very well there either, sailed farther to Scotland, where James IV. received him with open arms, married him to an earl's daughter and made a brief and futile invasion of England along with him. But in 1497 he thought best to dismiss him, and Perkin, after attempting something again in Ireland, landed in Cornwall with a small body of men.

Already Cornwall had risen in insurrection that year, not liking the taxation imposed for the purpose of repelling the Scotch invasion. A host of the country people, led first by a blacksmith, but afterwards by a nobleman, marched up towards London and were only defeated at Blackheath. But the Cornishmen were quite ready for another revolt, and indeed had invited Perkin to their shores. He had little fight in him, however, and after a futile siege of Exeter and an advance to Taunton he stole away and took sanctuary at Beaulieu in Hampshire. But, being assured of his life, he surrendered, was brought to London, and was only executed two years later, when, being imprisoned near the earl of Warwick in the Tower, he inveigled that simple-minded youth into a project of escape. For this Warwick, too, was tried, condemned and executed--no doubt to deliver Henry from repeated conspiracies in his favour.

Henry had by this time several children, of whom the eldest, Arthur, had been proposed in infancy for a bridegroom to Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon. The match had always been kept in view, but its completion depended greatly on the assurance Ferdinand and Isabella could feel of Henry's secure position upon the throne. At last Catherine was brought to England and was married to Prince Arthur at St Paul's on the 14th of November 1501. The lad was just over fifteen and the co-habitation of the couple was wisely delayed; but he died on the 2nd of April following. Another match was presently proposed for Catherine with the king's second son, Henry, which only took effect when the latter had become king himself. Meanwhile Henry's eldest daughter Margaret was married to James IV. of Scotland--a match distinctly intended to promote international peace, and make possible that ultimate union which actually resulted from it. The espousals had taken place at Richmond in 1502, and the marriage was celebrated in Scotland the year after. In the interval between these two events Henry lost his queen, who died on the 11th of February 1503, and during the remainder of his reign he made proposals in various quarters for a second marriage--proposals in which political objects were always the chief consideration; but none of them led to any result. In his latter years he became unpopular from the extortions practised by his two instruments, Empson and Dudley, under the authority of antiquated statutes. From the beginning of his reign he had been accumulating money, mainly for his own security against intrigues and conspiracies, and avarice had grown upon him with success. He died in April 1509, undoubtedly the richest prince in Christendom. He was not a niggard, however, in his expenditure. Before his death he had finished the hospital of the Savoy and made provision for the magnificent chapel at Westminster which bears his name. His money-getting was but part of his statesmanship, and for his statesmanship his country owes him not a little gratitude. He not only terminated a disastrous civil war and brought under control the spirit of ancient feudalism, but with a clear survey of the conditions of foreign powers he secured England in almost uninterrupted peace while he developed her commerce, strengthened her slender navy and built, apparently for the first time, a naval dock at Portsmouth.

In addition to his sons Arthur and Henry, Henry VII. had several daughters, one of whom, Margaret, married James IV., king of Scotland, and another, Mary, became the wife of Louis XII. of France, and afterwards of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk.

The popular view of Henry VII.'s reign has always been derived from
Bacon's _History_ of that king. This has been edited by J. R. Lumby
(Cambridge, 1881). But during the last half century large accessions
to our knowledge have been made from foreign and domestic archives,
and the sources of Bacon's work have been more critically examined.
For a complete account of those sources the reader may be referred to
W. Busch's _England under the Tudors_, published in German in 1892 and
in an English translation in 1895. Some further information of a
special kind will be found in M. Oppenheim's _Naval Accounts and
Inventories_, published by the Navy Records Society in 1896. See also
J. Gairdner's _Henry VII._ (1889). (J. Ga.)

HENRY VIII. (1491-1547), king of England and Ireland, the third child and second son of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, was born on the 28th of June 1491 and, like all the Tudor sovereigns except Henry VII., at Greenwich. His two brothers, Prince Arthur and Edmund, duke of Somerset, and two of his sisters predeceased their father; Henry was the only son, and Margaret, afterwards queen of Scotland, and Mary, afterwards queen of France and duchess of Suffolk, were the only daughters who survived. Henry is said, on authority which has not been traced farther back than Paolo Sarpi, to have been destined for the church; but the story is probably a mere surmise from his theological accomplishments, and from his earliest years high secular posts such as the viceroyalty of Ireland were conferred upon the child. He was the first English monarch to be educated under the influence of the Renaissance, and his tutors included the poet Skelton; he became an accomplished scholar, linguist, musician and athlete, and when by the death of his brother Arthur in 1502 and of his father on the 22nd of April 1509 Henry VIII. succeeded to the throne, his accession was hailed with universal acclamation.

He had been betrothed to his brother's widow Catherine of Aragon, and in spite of the protest which he had been made to register against the marriage, and of the doubts expressed by Julius II. and Archbishop Warham as to its validity, it was completed in the first few months of his reign. This step was largely due to the pressure brought to bear by Catherine's father Ferdinand upon Henry's council; he regarded England as a tool in his hands and Catherine as his resident ambassador. The young king himself at first took little interest in politics, and for two years affairs were managed by the pacific Richard Fox (q.v.) and Warham. Then Wolsey became supreme, while Henry was immersed in the pursuit of sport and other amusements. He took, however, the keenest interest from the first in learning and in the navy, and his inborn pride easily led him to support Wolsey's and Ferdinand's warlike designs on France. He followed an English army across the Channel in 1513, and personally took part in the successful sieges of Therouanne and Tournay and the battle of Guinegate which led to the peace of 1514. Ferdinand, however, deserted the English alliance, and amid the consequent irritation against everything Spanish, there was talk of a divorce between Henry and Catherine (1514), whose issue had hitherto been attended with fatal misfortune. But the renewed antagonism between England and France which followed the accession of Francis I. (1515) led to a rapprochement with Ferdinand; the birth of the lady Mary (1516) held out hopes of the male issue which Henry so much desired; and the question of a divorce was postponed. Ferdinand died in that year (1516) and the emperor Maximilian in 1519. Their grandson Charles V. succeeded them both in all their realms and dignities in spite of Henry's hardly serious candidature for the empire; and a lifelong rivalry broke out between him and Francis I. Wolsey used this antagonism to make England arbiter between them; and both monarchs sought England's favour in 1520, Francis at the Field of Cloth of Gold and Charles V. more quietly in Kent. At the conference of Calais in 1521 English influence reached its zenith; but the alliance with Charles destroyed the balance on which that influence depended. Francis was overweighted, and his defeat at Pavia in 1525 made the emperor supreme. Feeble efforts to challenge his power in Italy provoked the sack of Rome in 1527; and the peace of Cambrai in 1529 was made without any reference to Wolsey or England's interests.

Meanwhile Henry had been developing a serious interest in politics, and he could brook no superior in whatever sphere he wished to shine. He began to adopt a more critical attitude towards Wolsey's policy, foreign and domestic; and to give ear to the murmurs against the cardinal and his ecclesiastical rule. Parliament had been kept at arm's length since 1515 lest it should attack the church; but Wolsey's expensive foreign policy rendered recourse to parliamentary subsidies indispensable. When it met in 1523 it refused Wolsey's demands, and forced loans were the result which increased the cardinal's unpopularity. Nor did success abroad now blunt the edge of domestic discontent. His fate, however, was sealed by his failure to obtain a divorce for Henry from the papal court. The king's hopes of male issue had been disappointed, and by 1526 it was fairly certain that Henry could have no male heir to the throne while Catherine remained his wife. There was Mary, but no queen regnant had yet ruled in England; Margaret Beaufort had been passed over in favour of her son in 1485, and there was a popular impression that women were excluded from the throne. No candidate living could have secured the succession without a recurrence of civil war. Moreover the unexampled fatality which had attended Henry's issue revived the theological scruples which had always existed about the marriage; and the breach with Charles V. in 1527 provoked a renewal of the design of 1514. All these considerations were magnified by Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, though she certainly was not the sole or the main cause of the divorce. That the succession was the main point is proved by the fact that Henry's efforts were all directed to securing a wife and not a mistress. Wolsey persuaded him that the necessary divorce could be obtained from Rome, as it had been in the case of Louis XII. of France and Margaret of Scotland. For a time Clement VII. was inclined to concede the demand, and Campeggio in 1528 was given ample powers. But the prospect of French success in Italy which had encouraged the pope proved delusive, and in 1529 he had to submit to the yoke of Charles V. This involved a rejection of Henry's suit, not because Charles cared anything for his aunt, but because a divorce would mean disinheriting Charles's cousin Mary, and perhaps the eventual succession of the son of a French princess to the English throne.

Wolsey fell when Campeggio was recalled, and his fall involved the triumph of the anti-ecclesiastical party in England. Laymen who had resented their exclusion from power were now promoted to offices such as those of lord chancellor and lord privy seal which they had rarely held before; and parliament was encouraged to propound lay grievances against the church. On the support of the laity Henry relied to abolish papal jurisdiction and reduce clerical privilege and property in England; and by a close alliance with Francis I. he insured himself against the enmity of Charles V. But it was only gradually that the breach was completed with Rome. Henry had defended the papacy against Luther in 1521 and had received in return the title "defender of the faith." He never liked Protestantism, and he was prepared for peace with Rome on his own terms. Those terms were impossible of acceptance by a pope in Clement VII.'s position; but before Clement had made up his mind to reject them, Henry had discovered that the papacy was hardly worth conciliating. His eyes were opened to the extent of his own power as the exponent of national antipathy to papal jurisdiction and ecclesiastical privilege; and his appetite for power grew. With Cromwell's help he secured parliamentary support, and its usefulness led him to extend parliamentary representation to Wales and Calais, to defend the privileges of Parliament, and to yield rather than forfeit its confidence. He had little difficulty in securing the Acts of Annates, Appeals and Supremacy which completed the separation from Rome, or the dissolution of the monasteries which, by transferring enormous wealth from the church to the crown, really, in Cecil's opinion, ensured the reformation.

The abolition of the papal jurisdiction removed all obstacles to the divorce from Catherine and to the legalization of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn (1533). But the recognition of the royal supremacy could only be enforced at the cost of the heads of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher and a number of monks and others among whom the Carthusians signalized themselves by their devotion (1535-1536). Anne Boleyn fared no better than the Catholic martyrs; she failed to produce a male heir to the throne, and her conduct afforded a jury of peers, over which her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided, sufficient excuse for condemning her to death on a charge of adultery (1536). Henry then married Jane Seymour, who was obnoxious to no one, gave birth to Edward VI., and then died (1537). The dissolution of the monasteries had meanwhile evoked a popular protest in the north, and it was only by skilful and unscrupulous diplomacy that Henry was enabled to suppress so easily the Pilgrimage of Grace. Foreign intervention was avoided through the renewal of war between Francis and Charles; and the insurgents were hampered by having no rival candidate for the throne and no means of securing the execution of their programme.

Nevertheless their rising warned Henry against further doctrinal change. He had authorized the English Bible and some approach towards Protestant doctrine in the Ten Articles. He also considered the possibility of a political and theological alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany. But in 1538 he definitely rejected their theological terms, while in 1539-1540 they rejected his political proposals. By the statute of Six Articles (1539) he took his stand on Catholic doctrine; and when the Lutherans had rejected his alliance, and Cromwell's nominee, Anne of Cleves, had proved both distasteful on personal grounds and unnecessary because Charles and Francis were not really projecting a Catholic crusade against England, Anne was divorced and Cromwell beheaded. The new queen Catherine Howard represented the triumph of the reactionary party under Gardiner and Norfolk; but there was no idea of returning to the papal obedience, and even Catholic orthodoxy as represented by the Six Articles was only enforced by spasmodic outbursts of persecution and vain attempts to get rid of Cranmer.

The secular importance of Henry's activity has been somewhat obscured by his achievements in the sphere of ecclesiastical politics; but no small part of his energies was devoted to the task of expanding the royal authority at the expense of temporal competitors. Feudalism was not yet dead, and in the north and west there were medieval franchises in which the royal writ and common law hardly ran at all. Wales and its marches were brought into legal union with the rest of England by the statutes of Wales (1534-1536); and after the Pilgrimage of Grace the Council of the North was set up to bring into subjection the extensive jurisdictions of the northern earls. Neither they nor the lesser chiefs who flourished on the lack of common law and order could be reduced by ordinary methods, and the Councils of Wales and of the North were given summary powers derived from the Roman civil law similar to those exercised by the Star Chamber at Westminster and the court of Castle Chamber at Dublin. Ireland had been left by Wolsey to wallow in its own disorder; but disorder was anathema to Henry's mind, and in 1535 Sir William Skeffington was sent to apply English methods and artillery to the government of Ireland. Sir Anthony St Leger continued his policy from 1540; Henry, instead of being merely lord of Ireland dependent on the pope, was made by an Irish act of parliament king, and supreme head of the Irish church. Conciliation was also tried with some success; plantation schemes were rejected in favour of an attempt to Anglicize the Irish; their chieftains were created earls and endowed with monastic lands; and so peaceful was Ireland in 1542 that the lord-deputy could send Irish kernes and gallowglasses to fight against the Scots.

Henry, however, seems to have believed as much in the coercion of Scotland as in the conciliation of Ireland. Margaret Tudor's marriage had not reconciled the realms; and as soon as James V. became a possible pawn in the hands of Charles V., Henry bethought himself of his old claims to suzerainty over Scotland. At first he was willing to subordinate them to an attempt to win over Scotland to his anti-papal policy, and he made various efforts to bring about an interview with his nephew. But James V. was held aloof by Beaton and two French marriages; and France was alarmed by Henry's growing friendliness with Charles V., who was mollified by his cousin Mary's restoration to her place in the succession to the throne. In 1542 James madly sent a Scottish army to ruin at Solway Moss; his death a few weeks later left the Scottish throne to his infant daughter Mary Stuart, and Henry set to work to secure her hand for his son Edward and the recognition of his own suzerainty. A treaty was signed with the Scottish estates; but it was torn up a few months later under the influence of Beaton and the queen-dowager Mary of Guise, and Hertford was sent in 1544 to punish this breach of promise by sacking Edinburgh.

Perhaps to prevent French intervention in Scotland Henry joined Charles V. in invading France, and captured Boulogne (Sept. 1544). But Charles left his ally in the lurch and concluded the peace of Crepy that same month; and in 1545 Henry had to face alone a French invasion of the Isle of Wight. This attack proved abortive, and peace between England and France was made in 1546. Charles V.'s desertion inclined Henry to listen to the proposals of the threatened Lutheran princes, and the last two years of his reign were marked by a renewed tendency to advance in a Protestant direction. Catherine Howard had been brought to the block (1542) on charges in which there was probably a good deal of truth, and her successor, Catherine Parr, was a patroness of the new learning. An act of 1545 dissolved chantries, colleges and other religious foundations; and in the autumn of 1546 the Spanish ambassador was anticipating further anti-ecclesiastical measures. Gardiner had almost been sent to the Tower, and Norfolk and Surrey were condemned to death, while Cranmer asserted that it was Henry's intention to convert the mass into a communion service. An opportunist to the last, he would readily have sacrificed any theological convictions he may have had in the interests of national uniformity. He died on the 28th of January 1547, and was buried in St George's Chapel, Windsor.

The atrocity of many of Henry's acts, the novelty and success of his religious policy, the apparent despotism of his methods, or all combined, have made it difficult to estimate calmly the importance of Henry's work or the conditions which made it possible. Henry's egotism was profound, and personal motives underlay his public action. While political and ecclesiastical conditions made the breach with Rome possible--and in the view of most Englishmen desirable--Henry VIII. was led to adopt the policy by private considerations. He worked for the good of the state because he thought his interests were bound up with those of the nation; and it was the real coincidence of this private and public point of view that made it possible for so selfish a man to achieve so much for his country. The royal supremacy over the church and the means by which it was enforced were harsh and violent expedients; but it was of the highest importance that England should be saved from religious civil war, and it could only be saved by a despotic government. It was necessary for the future development of England that its governmental system should be centralized and unified, that the authority of the monarchy should be more firmly extended over Wales and the western and northern borders, and that the still existing feudal franchises should be crushed; and these objects were worth the price paid in the methods of the Star Chamber and of the Councils of the North and of Wales. Henry's work on the navy requires no apology; without it Elizabeth's victory over the Spanish Armada, the liberation of the Netherlands and the development of English colonies would have been impossible; and "of all others the year 1545 best marks the birth of the English naval power" (Corbett, _Drake_, i. 59). His judgment was more at fault when he conquered Boulogne and sought by violence to bring Scotland into union with England. But at least Henry appreciated the necessity of union within the British Isles; and his work in Ireland relaid the foundations of English rule. No less important was his development of the parliamentary system. Representation was extended to Wales, Cheshire, Berwick and Calais; and parliamentary authority was enhanced, largely that it might deal with the church, until men began to complain of this new parliamentary infallibility. The privileges of the two Houses were encouraged and expanded, and parliament was led to exercise ever wider powers. This policy was not due to any belief on Henry's part in parliamentary government, but to opportunism, to the circumstance that parliament was willing to do most of the things which Henry desired, while competing authorities, the church and the old nobility, were not. Nevertheless, to the encouragement given by Henry VIII. parliament owed not a little of its future growth, and to the aid rendered by parliament Henry owed his success.

He has been described as a "despot under the forms of law"; and it is apparently true that he committed no illegal act. His despotism consists not in any attempt to rule unconstitutionally, but in the extraordinary degree to which he was able to use constitutional means in the furtherance of his own personal ends. His industry, his remarkable political insight, his lack of scruple, and his combined strength of will and subtlety of intellect enabled him to utilize all the forces which tended at that time towards strong government throughout western Europe. In Michelet's words, "le nouveau Messie est le roi"; and the monarchy alone seemed capable of guiding the state through the social and political anarchy which threatened all nations in their transition from medieval to modern organization. The king was the emblem, the focus and the bond of national unity; and to preserve it men were ready to put up with vagaries which to other ages seem intolerable. Henry could thus behead ministers and divorce wives with comparative impunity, because the individual appeared to be of little importance compared with the state. This impunity provoked a licence which is responsible for the unlovely features of Henry's reign and character. The elevation and the isolation of his position fostered a detachment from ordinary virtues and compassion, and he was a remorseless incarnation of Machiavelli's _Prince_. He had an elastic conscience which was always at the beck and call of his desire, and he cared little for principle. But he had a passion for efficiency, and for the greatness of England and himself. His mind, in spite of its clinging to the outward forms of the old faith, was intensely secular; and he was as devoid of a moral sense as he was of a genuine religious temperament. His greatness consists in his practical aptitude, in his political perception, and in the self-restraint which enabled him to confine within limits tolerable to his people an insatiable appetite for power.

The original materials for Henry VIII.'s biography are practically all
incorporated in the monumental _Letters and Papers of the Reign of
Henry VIII._ (21 vols.), edited by Brewer and Gairdner and completed
after fifty years' labour in 1910. A few further details may be
gleaned from such contemporary sources as Hall's _Chronicle_,
Cavendish's _Life of Wolsey_, W. Thomas's _The Pilgrim_ and others;
and some additions have been made to the documentary sources contained
in the _Letters and Papers_ by recent works, such as Ehses' _Romische
Dokumente_, and Merriman's _Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell_. Lord
Herbert of Cherbury's _Life and Reign of Henry VIII._ (1649), while
good for its time, is based upon a very partial knowledge of the
sources and somewhat antiquated principles of historical scholarship.
Froude's famous portraiture of Henry is coloured by the ideas of
hero-worship and history which the author imbibed from Carlyle, and
the rival portraits in Lingard, R. W. Dixon's _Church History_ and
Gasquet's _Henry VIII. and the Monasteries_ by strong religious
feeling. A more discriminating estimate is attempted by H. A. L.
Fisher in Messrs Longmans' _Political History of England_, vol. v.
(1906). Of the numerous paintings of Henry none is by Holbein, who,
however, executed the striking chalk-drawing of Henry's head, now at
Munich, and the famous but decaying cartoon at Devonshire House. The
well-known three-quarter length at Windsor, usually attributed to
Holbein, is by an inferior artist. The best collection of Henry's
portraits was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909, and
the catalogue of that exhibition contains the best description of
them; several are reproduced in Pollard's _Henry VIII._ (Goupil)
(1902), the letterpress of which was published by Longmans in a
cheaper edition (1905). Henry composed numerous state papers still
extant; his only book was his _Assertio septem sacramentorum contra M.
Lutherum_ (1521), a copy of which, signed by Henry himself, is at
Windsor. Several anthems composed by him are extant; and one at least,
_O Lord, the Maker of all Things_, is still occasionally rendered in
English cathedrals. (A. F. P.)

HENRY I. (1214-1217), king of Castile, son of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter of Henry II. of England, after whom he was named, was born about 1207. He was killed, while still a boy, by the fall of a tile from a roof.

HENRY II. of Trastamara (1369-1379), king of Castile, founder of the dynasty known as "the new kings," was the eldest son of Alphonso XI. and of his mistress Leonora de Guzman. He was born in 1333. His father endowed him with great lordships in northern Spain, and made him count of Trastamara. After the death of Alphonso XI. in 1350, Leonora was murdered to satisfy the revenge of the king's neglected wife. Several of the numerous children she had borne to Alphonso were slain at different times by Peter the Cruel, the king's legitimate son and successor. Henry preserved his life by submissions and by keeping out of the king's way. At last, after taking part in several internal commotions, he fled to France in 1356. In 1366 he persuaded the mercenary soldiers paid off by the kings of England and France to accompany him on an expedition to upset Peter, who was driven out. The Black Prince having intervened on behalf of Peter, Henry was defeated at Najera (3rd of April 1367) and had again to flee to Aragon. When the Black Prince was told that "the Bastard" had neither been slain nor taken, he said that nothing had been done. And so it turned out; for, when the Black Prince had left Spain, Henry came back with a body of French soldiers of fortune under du Guesclin, and drove his brother into the castle of Montiel in La Mancha. Peter was tempted out by du Guesclin, and the half brothers met in the Frenchman's tent. They rushed at one another, and Peter, the stronger man, threw Henry down, and fell on him. One of Henry's pages seized the king by the leg and threw him on his back. Henry then pulled up Peter's hauberk and stabbed him mortally in the stomach, on the 23rd of March 1369. He reigned for ten years, with some success both in pacifying the kingdom and in war with Portugal. But as his title was disputed he was compelled to purchase support by vast grants to the nobles and concessions to the cities, by which he gained the title of _El de las Mercedes_--he of the largesse. Henry was a strong ally of the French king in his wars with the English, who supported the claims of Peter's natural daughters. He died on the 30th of May 1379.

HENRY III. (1390-1406) king of Castile, called _El Doliente_, the Sufferer, was the son of John I. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand of Portugal. He was born in 1379. The period of minority was exceptionally anarchical, even for Castile, but as the cities, always the best supporters of the royal authority, were growing in strength, Henry was able to reduce his kingdom to obedience, and, when he took the government into his own hands after 1393, to compel his nobles with comparative ease to surrender the crown lands they had seized. The meeting of the Cortes summoned by him at Madrid in 1394 marked a great epoch in the establishment of a practically despotic royal authority, based on the consent of the commons, who looked to the crown to protect them against the excesses of the nobles. Henry strengthened his position still further by his marriage with Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt and of Constance, elder daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla. This union combined the rival claims of the descendants of Peter and of Henry of Trastamara. The king's bodily weakness limited his real capacity, and his early death on the 25th of December 1406 cut short the promise of his reign.

HENRY IV. (1453-1474), king of Castile, surnamed the Impotent, or the Spendthrift, was the son of John II. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife, Mary, daughter of Ferdinand I. of Aragon and Sicily. He was born at Valladolid on the 6th of January 1425. The surnames given to this king by his subjects are of much more than usual accuracy. His personal character was one of mere weakness, bodily and mental. Henry was an undutiful son, and his reign was one long period of confusion, marked by incidents of the most ignominious kind. He divorced his first wife Blanche of Navarre in 1453 on the ground of "mutual impotence." Yet in 1468 he married Joan of Portugal, and when she bore a daughter, first repudiated her as adulterine, and then claimed her for his own. In 1468 he was solemnly deposed in favour of his brother Alphonso, on whose death in the same year his authority was again recognized. The last years of his life were spent in vain endeavours, first to force his half-sister Isabella, afterwards queen, to marry his favourite, the Master of Santiago, and then to exclude her from the throne. Henry died at Madrid on the 12th of December 1474.

HENRY I. (1008-1060), king of France, son of King Robert and his queen, Constance of Aquitaine, and grandson of Hugh Capet, came to the throne upon the death of his father in 1031, although in 1027 he had been anointed king at Reims and associated in the government with his father. His mother, who favoured her younger son Robert, and had retired from court upon Henry's coronation, formed a powerful league against him, and he was forced to take refuge with Robert II., duke of Normandy. In the civil war which resulted, Henry was able to break up the league of his opponents in 1032. Constance died in 1034, and the rebel brother Robert was given the duchy of Burgundy, thus founding that great collateral line which was to rival the kings of France for three centuries. Henry atoned for this by a reign marked by unceasing struggle against the great barons. From 1033 to 1043 he was involved in a life and death contest with those nobles whose territory adjoined the royal domains, especially with the great house of Blois, whose count, Odo II., had been the centre of the league of Constance, and with the counts of Champagne. Henry's success in these wars was largely due to the help given him by Robert of Normandy, but upon the accession of Robert's son William (the Conqueror), Normandy itself became the chief danger. From 1047 to the year of his death, Henry was almost constantly at war with William, who held his own against the king's formidable leagues and beat back two royal invasions, in 1055 and 1058. Henry's reign marks the height of feudalism. The Normans were independent of him, with their frontier barely 25 m. west of Paris; to the south his authority was really bounded by the Loire; in the east the count of Champagne was little more than nominally his subject, and the duchy of Burgundy was almost entirely cut off from the king. Yet Henry maintained the independence of the clergy against the pope Leo IX., and claimed Lorraine from the emperor Henry III. In an interview at Ivois, he reproached the emperor with the violation of promises, and Henry III. challenged him to a single combat. According to the German chronicle--which French historians doubt--the king of France declined the combat and fled from Ivois during the night. In 1059 he had his eldest son Philip crowned as joint king, and died the following year. Henry's first wife was Maud, niece of the emperor Henry III., whom he married in 1043. She died childless in 1044. Historians have sometimes confused her with Maud (or Matilda), the emperor Conrad II.'s daughter, to whom Henry was affianced in 1033, but who died before the marriage. In 1051 Henry married the Russian princess Anne, daughter of Yaroslav I., grand duke of Kiev. She bore him two sons, Philip, his successor, and Hugh the great, count of Vermandois.

See the _Historiae_ of Rudolph Glaber, edited by M. Prou (Paris,
1886); F. Sochnee, _Catalogue des actes d'Henri I^er_ (1907); de Caiz
de Saint Aymour, _Anne de Russie, reine de France_ (1896); E. Lavisse,
_Histoire de France_, tome ii. (1901), and the article on Henry I. in
_La Grande Encyclopedie_ by M. Prou.

HENRY II. (1519-1559), king of France, the second son of Francis I. and Claude, succeeded to the throne in 1547. When only seven years old he was sent by his father, with his brother the dauphin Francis, as a hostage to Spain in 1526, whence they returned after the conclusion of the peace of Cambrai in 1530. Henry was too young to have carried away any abiding impressions, yet throughout his life his character, dress and bearing were far more Spanish than French. In 1533 his father married him to Catherine de' Medici, from which match, as he said, Francis hoped to gain great advantage, even though it might be somewhat of a misalliance. In 1536 Henry, hitherto duke of Orleans, became dauphin by the death of his elder brother Francis. From that time he was under the influence of two personages, who dominated him completely for the remainder of his life--Diane de Poitiers, his mistress, and Anne de Montmorency, his mentor. Moreover, his younger brother, Charles of Orleans, who was of a more sprightly temperament, was his father's favourite; and the rivalry of Diane and the duchesse d'Etampes helped to make still wider the breach between the king and the dauphin. Henry supported the constable Montmorency when he was disgraced in 1541; protested against the treaty of Crepy in 1544; and at the end of the reign held himself completely aloof. His accession in 1547 gave rise to a veritable revolution at the court. Diane, Montmorency and the Guises were all-powerful, and dismissed Cardinal de Tournon, de Longueval, the duchesse d'Etampes and all the late king's friends and officials. At that time Henry was twenty-eight years old. He was a robust man, and inherited his father's love of violent exercise; but his character was weak and his intelligence mediocre, and he had none of the superficial and brilliant gifts of Francis I. He was cold, haughty, melancholy and dull. He was a bigoted Catholic, and showed to the Protestants even less mercy than his father. During his reign the royal authority became more severe and more absolute than ever. Resistance to the financial extortions of the government was cruelly chastised, and the "Chambre Ardente" was instituted against the Reformers. Abroad, the struggle was continued against Charles V. and Philip II., which ended in the much-discussed treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Some weeks afterwards high feast was held on the occasion of the double marriage of the king's daughter Elizabeth with the king of Spain, and of his sister Margaret with the duke of Savoy. On the 30th of June 1559, when tilting with the count of Montgomery, Henry was wounded in the temple by a lance. In spite of the attentions of Ambroise Pare he died on the 10th of July. By his wife Catherine de' Medici he had seven children living: Elizabeth, queen of Spain; Claude, duchess of Lorraine; Francis (II), Charles (IX.) and Henry (III.), all of whom came to the throne; Marguerite, who became queen of Navarre in 1572; and Francis, duke of Alencon and afterwards of Anjou, who died in 1584.

The bulk of the documents for the reign of Henry II. are unpublished,
and are in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Of the published
documents, see especially the correspondence of Catherine de' Medici
(ed. by de la Ferriere, Paris, 1880), of Diane de Poitiers (ed. by
Guiffrey, Paris, 1866), of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret (ed.
by Rochambeau, Paris, 1877), of Odet de Selve, ambassador to England
(ed. by Lefevre-Pontalis, Paris, 1888) and of Dominique du Gabre,
ambassador to Venice (ed. by Vitalis, Paris, 1903); Ribier, _Lettres
et memoires d'estat_ (Paris, 1666); _Relations des ambassadeurs
venitiens_, &c. Of the contemporary memoirs and histories, see
Brantome (ed. by Lalanne, Paris, 1864-1882), Francois de Lorraine (ed.
by Michaud and Poujoulat, Paris, 1839), Montluc (ed. by de Ruble,
Paris, 1864), F. de Boyvin du Villars (Michaud and Poujoulat), F. de
Rabutin (_Pantheon litteraire_, Paris, 1836). See also de Thou,
_Historia sui temporis_ ... (London, 1733); Decrue, _Anne de
Montmorency_ (Paris, 1889); H. Forneron, _Les Ducs de Guise et leur
epoque_, vol. i. (Paris, 1877); and H. Lemonnier, "La France sous
Henri II" (Paris, 1904), in the _Histoire de France_, by E. Lavisse,
which contains a fuller bibliography of the subject.

HENRY III. (1551-1589), king of France, third son of Henry II. and Catherine de' Medici, was born at Fontainebleau on the 19th of September 1551, and succeeded to the throne of France on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574. In his youth, as duke of Anjou, he was warmly attached to the Huguenot opinions, as we learn from his sister Marguerite de Valois; but his unstable character soon gave way before his mother's will, and both Henry and Marguerite remained choice ornaments of the Catholic Church. Henry won, under the direction of Marshal de Tavannes, two brilliant victories at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569). He was the favourite son of his mother, and took part with her in organizing the massacre of St Bartholomew. In 1573 Catherine procured his election to the throne of Poland. Passionately enamoured of the princess of Conde, he set out reluctantly to Warsaw, but, on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574, he escaped from his Polish subjects, who endeavoured to retain him by force, came back to France and assumed the crown. He returned to a wretched kingdom, torn with civil war. In spite of his good intentions, he was incapable of governing, and abandoned the power to his mother and his favourites. Yet he was no dullard. He was a man of keen intelligence and cultivated mind, and deserves as much as Francis I. the title of patron of letters and art. But his incurable indolence and love of pleasure prevented him from taking any active part in affairs. Surrounded by his _mignons_, he scandalized the people by his effeminate manners. He dressed himself in women's clothes, made a collection of little dogs and hid in the cellars when it thundered. The disgust aroused by the vices and effeminacy of the king increased the popularity of Henry of Guise. After the "day of the barricades" (the 12th of May 1588), the king, perceiving that his influence was lost, resolved to rid himself of Guise by assassination; and on the 23rd of December 1588 his faithful bodyguard, the "forty-five," carried out his design at the chateau of Blois. But the fanatical preachers of the League clamoured furiously for vengeance, and on the 1st of August 1589, while Henry III. was investing Paris with Henry of Navarre, Jacques Clement, a Dominican friar, was introduced into his presence on false letters of recommendation, and plunged a knife into the lower part of his body. He died a few hours afterwards with great fortitude. By his wife Louise of Lorraine, daughter of the count of Vaudemont, he had no children, and on his deathbed he recognized Henry of Navarre as his successor.

See the memoirs and chronicles of l'Estoile, Villeroy, Ph. Hurault de
Cheverny, Brantome, Marguerite de Valois, la Huguerye, du
Plessis-Mornay, &c.; _Archives curieuses_ of Cimber and Danjou, vols.
x. and xi.; _Memoires de la Ligue_ (new ed., Amsterdam, 1758); the
histories of T. A. d'Aubigne and J. A. de Thou; Correspondence of
Catherine de' Medici and of Henry IV. (in the _Collection de documents
inedits_), and of the Venetian ambassadors, &c.; P. Matthieu,
_Histoire de France_, vol. i. (1631); Scipion Dupleix, _Histoire de
Henri III_ (1633); Robiquet, _Paris et la Ligue_ (1886); and J. H.
Mariejol, "La Reforme et la Ligue," in the _Histoire de France_, by E.
Lavisse (Paris, 1904), which contains a more complete bibliography.

HENRY IV. (1553-1610), king of France, the son of Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendome, head of the younger branch of the Bourbons, descendant of Robert of Clermont, sixth son of St Louis and of Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, was born at Pau (Basses Pyrenees) on the 14th of December 1553. He was educated as a Protestant, and in 1557 was sent to the court at Amiens. In 1561 he entered the College de Navarre at Paris, returning in 1565 to Bearn. During the third war of religion in France (1568-1570) he was taken by his mother to Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Protestant forces since the death of Louis I., prince of Conde, at Jarnac, and distinguished himself at the battle of Arnay-le-Duc in Burgundy in 1569. On the 9th of June 1572, Jeanne d'Albret died and Henry became king of Navarre, marrying Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX. of France, on the 18th of August of that year. He escaped the massacre of St Bartholomew on the 24th of August by a feigned abjuration. On the 2nd of February 1576, after several vain attempts, he escaped from the court, joined the combined forces of Protestants and of opponents of the king, and obtained by the treaty of Beaulieu (1576) the government of Guienne. In 1577 he secured the treaty of Bergerac, which foreshadowed the edict of Nantes. As a result of quarrels with his unworthy wife, and the unwelcome intervention of Henry III., he undertook the seventh war of religion, known as the "war of the lovers" (_des amoureux_), seized Cahors on the 5th of May 1580, and signed the treaty of Fleix on the 26th of November 1580. On the 10th of June 1584 the death of Monsieur, the duke of Anjou, brother of King Henry III., made Henry of Navarre heir presumptive to the throne of France. Excluded from it by the treaty of Nemours (1585) he began the "war of the three Henrys" by a campaign in Guienne (1586) and defeated Anne, duc de Joyeuse, at Coutras on the 20th of October 1587. Then Henry III., driven from Paris by the League on account of his murder of the duke of Guise at Blois (1588), sought the aid of the king of Navarre to win back his capital, recognizing him as his heir. The assassination of Henry III. on the 1st of August 1589 left Henry king of France; but he had to struggle for ten more years against the League and against Spain before he won his kingdom. The main events in that long struggle were the victory of Arques over Charles, duke of Mayenne, on the 28th of September 1589; of Ivry, on the 14th of March 1590; the siege of Paris (1590); of Rouen (1592); the meeting of the Estates of the League (1593), which the _Satire Menippee_ turned to ridicule; and finally the conversion of Henry IV. to Catholicism in July 1593--an act of political wisdom, since it brought about the collapse of all opposition. Paris gave in to him on the 22nd of March 1594 and province by province yielded to arms or negotiations; while the victory of Fontaine-Francaise (1595) and the capture of Amiens forced Philip II. of Spain to sign the peace of Vervins on the 2nd of May 1598. On the 13th of April of that year Henry IV. had promulgated the Edict of Nantes.

Then Henry set to work to pacify and restore prosperity to his kingdom. Convinced by the experience of the wars that France needed an energetic central power, he pushed at times his royal prerogatives to excess, raising taxes in spite of the Estates, interfering in the administration of the towns, reforming their constitutions, and holding himself free to reject the advice of the notables if he consulted them. Aided by his faithful friend Maximilien de Bethune, baron de Rosny and duc de Sully (q.v.), he reformed the finances, repressed abuses, suppressed useless offices, extinguished the formidable debt and realized a reserve of eighteen millions. To alleviate the distress of the people, he undertook to develop both agriculture and industry: planting colonies of Dutch and Flemish settlers to drain the marshes of Saintonge, issuing prohibitive measures against the importation of foreign goods (1597), introducing the silk industry, encouraging the manufacture of cloth, of glass-ware, of tapestries (Gobelins), and under the direction of Sully--named _grand-voyer de France_--improving and increasing the routes for commerce. A complete system of canals was planned, that of Briare partly dug. New capitulations were concluded with the sultan Ahmed I. (1604) and treaties of commerce with England (1606), with Spain and Holland. Attempts were made in 1604 and 1608 to colonize Canada (see CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE). The army was reorganized, its pay raised and assured, a school of cadets formed to supply it with officers, artillery constituted and strongholds on the frontier fortified. While lacking the artistic tastes of the Valois, Henry beautified Paris, building the great gallery of the Louvre, finishing the Tuileries, building the Pont Neuf, the Hotel-de-Ville and the Place Royale.

The foreign policy of Henry IV. was directed against the Habsburgs. Without declaring war, he did all possible harm to them by alliances and diplomacy. In Italy he gained the grand duke of Tuscany--marrying his niece Marie de' Medici in 1600--the duke of Mantua, the republic of Venice and Pope Paul V. The duke of Savoy, who had held back from the treaty of Vervins in 1598, signed the treaty of Lyons in 1601; in exchange for the marquisate of Saluzzo, France acquired Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the bailliage of Gex. In the Low Countries, Henry sent subsidies to the Dutch in their struggle against Spain. He concluded alliances with the Protestant princes in Germany, with the duke of Lorraine, the Swiss cantons (treaty of Soleure, 1602) and with Sweden.