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II. Henry VII: Rapacity And Remorse1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. R. Elton
G. R. Elton
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge
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Extract

In myEngland under the Tudors I took the liberty of advancing the view that Henry VII’s reputation for rapacity and extortion is probably not borne out by the facts and that his policy did not turn from just to unjust exactions. Though I knew, of course, that this opinion contradicted one held by many since Henry VII’s own time I did not imagine it to be provocative; I thought that the work of such scholars as Professors Thorne and Richardson, Miss Brodie and Mr Somerville, had shown the old notions to be quite as mistaken as I maintained. However, I have since discovered that I was too simple in that assumption; in particular, I have been challenged to say how I would dispose of the well-attested facts that Henry VII deteriorated in the second half of his reign into a grasping miser and that he showed deep remorse in his last weeks. The short answer is that I do not regard the first fact as attested at all and cannot believe that remorse in the face of death should be interpreted so trustingly. But, since the issue still appears to be in doubt, I should like to rehearse it here rather more thoroughly. I believe that this historical revision results from an important change in historical method which involves both a more critical attitude to the sources and a better understanding of that age in its own terms.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1958 , pp. 21 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1958

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References

2 England under the Tudors (1955), 52 and n.

3 Bacon, F., [History of the Reign of King] Henry VII (ed. Lumby, J. R., Cambridge, 1885), 213f., 128.Google Scholar

4 Gladys, Temperley, Henry VII (1917), 269, 275.Google Scholar

5 Fisher, H. A. L., Political History of England, v (1913), 95.Google Scholar

6 Bacon, Henry VII, 215.

7 Williams, C.H., ‘Henry VII’, in The Great Tudors (ed. Garvin, K., 1935), 3ff.Google Scholar

8 Cf. my Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge, 1953), 19.Google Scholar

9 Wolffe, B.P., ‘The Management of the Royal Estates under the Yorkist Kings’, E[nglish] H[istorica] R[eview], XXI (1956), 1ff.Google Scholar

10 Ibid. 25.

11 E.g. Cal[endar of] Pat[ent Rolls] Henry VII, 1, 15, 45, 48, 54, 62, etc. (Sept. 1485 to March i486).

12 The first recorded commission issued on 15 Jan. 1436 (Ibid. 71). The whole subject is discussed in W. C. Richardson, ‘The Surveyor of the King's Prerogative’, E.H.R. LVI (1941), 52ff.

13 Ibid. 56–7.

14 Cal. Pat. Henry VII, 11, 323, 420–2, 437–8, 457, 459.

15 Robert Constable, Praerogativa Regis (ed. Thorne, S. E., Yale, 1949).Google Scholar

16 Ibid. p. vii.

17 Ibid. pp. vii—xi.

18 For all this cf. Ibid. pp. xiii–xxi.

19 Ibid. pp. xliiiff.

20 Ibid. p. xi.

21 I Henry VIII c. 8. All references to statutes are to Statutes of the Realm (1810–28), vols. II and III.

22 I Henry VIII c. 12.

23 Edward Hall, The Vnion of the two noble and illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (ed. 1809) [hereafter referred to as Chronicle], 499.

24 Dietz, F. C., English Government Finance 1485–1558 (University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences IX, 1920), 44.Google Scholar

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29 For a discussion of the problems posed by these statutes cf. T. F. T. Plucknett, ‘ Some proposed legislation of Henry VIII’, Trans. R. Hist. Soc. (1936), 125ff. and my ‘Informing for Profit’, C[ambridge] H[istorical] J[ournal], XI (1954), 149ff.

30 P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], DL 5, vols. 2 and 4. The subject is also summarized in Mr Somerville’s article, referred to in n. 27 above.

31 I Henry VIII c. 4.

32 P.R.O. C 82/335.

33 Temperley, op. cit. 278.

34 [The] Great Chronicle [of London] (ed. Thomas, A. H. and Thornley, I. D., 1938), 334.Google Scholar

35 I Henry VII c. 7; II Henry VII c. 17.

36 3 Henry VII c. 12; 4 Henry VII c. 11.

37 II Henry VII c. 8.

38 4 Henry VII c. 83; 17 Edward IV c. 1.

39 I Henry VII c. 9; 19 Henry VII c. 21. There is no law in the statute book dealing with raw silk.

40 P.R.O. DL 5/2, fo. 30.

41 Ibid. fo. 101.

42 I Henry VII cc. 5, 8, 9; 2 Henry VII cc. 7,8, 12;4 Henry VII cc. 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 19, 21, 23; 7 Henry VII c. 3; 11 Henry VII cc. 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 27; 19 Henry VII cc. 5,6, 10, 18, 19, 21.

43 I Henry VIII c. 4. Six years later another act (7 Henry VIII c. 3) tried to be easier on the Crown. Under it, where the king alone had power to act, he was to have four years; where both the king and a private person could act the former had two years and the latter one.

44 Bacon, Henry VII, 191.

45 19 Henry VII c. 14.

46 Polydore Vergil has the most rhetorical and least particular version of these charges ([Anglica] Historia, ed. D. Hay, 1950, 126–30); Hall (Chronicle, 502) is rather more specific in his description of ‘this pluckyng bancket’.

47 Letters and Papers [Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign] of Henry VIII, 1 (1920), 414 (58).Google Scholar

48 John Stowe, Annales of England (1592), 810. He borrowed this from the Great Chronicle of London, 335.

49 British Museum, Lansdowne MS. 127.

50 Cf. Dietz, op. cit. 39.

51 Hall, Chronicle, 506.

52 Brodie, art. cit. 152.

53 Cf. my article in C.H.J., cited in n. 29, p. 26 above.

54 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth (1672), 7. ‘B’ and ‘G’ are very alike in early Tudor handwriting.

55 Polydore Vergil, Historia, 128.

56 The Great Tudors, 18. For an excellent discussion of obligations and recognisances cf. Richardson, W. C., Tudor Chamber Administration (Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 141ff.Google Scholar

57 Dietz, op. cit. 39f. I have taken the money for pardons (compositions?), fines for escapes, forfeited goods, customs on wine, and fines for hunting and riots, to fall within this category.

58 P.R.O. S.P. 1/133, fo. 245.

59 Richardson, Tudor Chamber Administration, 169, 198.

60 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (ed. Nicholls, J. G., 1852), 29Google Scholar; the same is true of ‘A London Chronicle in the Times of King Henry VII and King Henry VIII’, Camden Mite. IV (ed. Hopper, C., 1859), 6.Google Scholar

61 The chronicles of the reign have been analysed by Busch, W., England under the Tudors (1893), 1, 391ff. and by A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley in their introduction to the Great Chronicle of London. Dietz, op. cit. 35ff., traces the growth of Empson's and Dudley's legend through the accounts, but his investigation is neither precise nor complete.Google Scholar

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64 Vergil, Historia, 127ff.; Hall, Chronicle, 477, 492ff., 502f., 504; Richard, Grafton, Chronicle (ed. Ellis, H., 1809), 236.Google Scholar

65 Fabyan, Chronicle, 690.

66 Great Chronicle, 334f.; Hall, Chronicle, 502f.

67 Great Chronicle, 294 f., 325f.

68 The fact, well known with regard to Vergil and Hall, is also true of the London chronicles (Ibid. p. lxviii).

69 Above, p. 27.

70 4 Henry VII c. 19.

71 Great Chronicle, 325.

72 Hay, D., Polydore Vergil (1952), 4.Google Scholar

73 Ibid. 93.

74 Vergil, Historia, 128f. (in the collation). Hall, Chronicle, 497, is practically a straight translation.

75 In Mr Cooper's, J. P.review of my England under the Tudors in Oxford Magazine, LXXIV (1955–1956), 324, the review which first suggested to me that it would be as well to elaborate the reasons for my interpretation of Henry VII's policy.Google Scholar

76 John, Fisher, ‘Funeral Sermon for Henry VII’, English Works (ed. Mayor, J. E. B., 1876), 271f.Google Scholar

77 Chronicles of London (ed. Kingsford), 261.

78 Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII (ed. Gairdner, J., 1863), II, 379.Google Scholar

79 Cat. Pat. Henry VII, 11, 600. The special patent roll of pardons (C 67/53) includes nothing after 1505–6.

80 Ibid. 594–600, 609–11, 621–2, 625.

81 Ibid. 600, 609.

82 Steele, R. R., Tudor and Stuart Proclamations (Oxford, 1910), no. 51b. The document there suggested as extant cannot be found at the P.R.O.: I am happy to have confirmation of my own disappointment in the search from Mr H. C. Johnson. All that survives is a draft specimen of the pardon as issued (C 82/326), and at present it is not known what Steele had in mind in his entry.Google Scholar

83 C 82/335 (slightly mutilated but completed from paper copies in S.P. 1/1, fos. 2–3). This is Steele, op. cit. no. 53; his date (30 April) appears to be conjectural and arrived at on grounds no longer apparent. It is wrong: Great Chronicle, 337.

84 The two specimens are in C 82/326 and 335.

85 But not entirely free. An act of 1514 (5 Henry VIII c. 8) ordered that the general pardon should be obtainable on payment of certain small fees only, as ordered by king and council.

86 The Will of Henry VII (ed. Astle, T., 1775), 11f.Google Scholar

87 John Fisher, op. cit. 273 f.

88 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, 1, 54 (63).Google Scholar

89 Elton, Tudor Revolution m Government, 45 ff.

90 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII,11, 1435, 1455, 1595.

91 Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government, 143 f., 162, 293 n. 1.