Settlement of the crown.

were by one act restored to their former rights : and separate bills were passed in favour of the king's mother, the dukes of Bedford, Buckingham, and Somerset, the marquess of Dorset, the earl of Oxford, the lords Beaumont, Wells, Clifford, Hungerford, Roos, and several others. The whole number of those ⚫ who profited by this measure, amounted to one hundred and seven.

The transactions which followed were important and interesting. 1. In the settlement of the crown by legislative enactment, Henry proceeded with cautious and measured steps. Jealous as he was of the pretended right of the house of Lancaster, he was equally sensible that the claim of the princess Elizabeth would prove the firmest support of his throne. Hence he watched all the proceedings with the most scrupulous solicitude. To weaken her claim would be to undermine his own interest to confirm it would encourage a suspicion that he was conscious of a defect in his own title. He therefore refused both to revive the act of Henry IV., which established the succession in the line of John of Ghent, and to repeal that of Edward IV., which established it in the line of Lionel duke of Clarence. In his own favour he commanded that all records, containing any mention of his attainder, should be cancelled and taken off the file in favour of his Lancastrian predecessors, he annulled the act of Edward IV., which had pronounced Henry IV. and Henry V. usurpers, Henry VI. an usurper and traitor, Margaret and Edward, the wife and son of that

2

Rot. Parl. vi. 273. 288. 280-217. Year-boock, Term. Mich. Henry VII. 5. Bacon, 8.

2 Bacon, 9.

monarch, traitors, and all the heirs of the body of Henry of Derby incapable of holding or inheriting any estate, dignity, pre-eminence, hereditament, or possession within the realm and in favour of Elizabeth he repealed the act of the 1st of Richard III., by which that princess had been pronounced a bastard, in common with the rest of her father's children by Elizabeth Gray. Out of respect for her who was to be queen, neither the title nor the body of the act was read in either house. By advice of the judges it was merely designated by the first words; the original was then ordered to be burnt; and all persons possessed of copies, were commanded to deliver them to the chancellor before Easter, under the penalty of fine and imprisonment 2. In the act of settlement itself no mention, was made of Elizabeth or her heirs: even Henry's own claim, which he so ostentatiously brought forward in his speech to the commons, « of his just right of inheritance, and the sure judgment of God,

'Rot. Parl. vi. 288. An act was also passed restoring Elizabeth the widow of Edward IV. to the same title and dignity, as she would have had, if no act had passed against her under Richard III.: and rendering her able to plead, and be impleaded, and to receive and grant lands and chattels. But it does not appear that her dower was restored. Ibid.

2 Ibid. 289. Year-book, Term. Hil. 1 Henry VII. 5. Stillington bishop of Bath, who had made the petition and act now repealed, had been apprehended by order of the king immediately after the battle of Bosworth. We find him soon afterwards a prisoner at York, « sore crazed by reason of his trouble and carrying. » (Drake's Eborac. 123.) He however made his peace with Henry, was not included in the act of attainder, and obtained a full pardon. On this account Henry opposed a motion to call him before the house of lords for his conduct in composing the petition and act of bastardy of Edward's children. Year-book, Ibid.

Dec. 10.

was studiously omitted: and it was merely enacted, that «< the inheritance of the crown should be, rest,

"

remain, and abide in the most royal person of the

« then sovereign lord, king Henry VII., and the heirs

of his body lawfully coming, perpetually with the grace of God so to endure, and in none other 1 2o. But this cautious policy, and in particular this silence with respect to the princess, seems to have alarmed not only the partisans of the houses of York, but even Henry's own friends, who had trusted that under the union of the red and white roses domestic peace would 'succeed to war and dissention. When the commons presented to the king the usual grant of tonnage and poundage for life, they coupled with it a petition, that he would be pleased to « take to wife and consort the princess Elizabeth, which marriage they hoped God would bless with a progeny of the race of kings 2 : » the lords spiritual and temporal, rising from their seats, and bowing to the throne, signified their concurrence; and Henry graciously answered that he was willing to comply with their request 3. 3°. At the very commencement of the session the king had alluded to « the punish«ment of those, who had offended his royal majesty. » The expression was noticed: how, it was asked, could

D

Rot. Parl. vi. 2700. While this bill was before the lords, the chancellor assembled all the judges, and required their opinion, whether such an act, if it were passed, would have the effect « of « resuming all the franchises and liberties of all manner of persons. It seems to have been apprehended that the new settlement might have had the same effect, as the requisition of the crown by conquest. The judges replied in the negative. Year-book, Term. Hil. 1 Hen. VII. 25.

1 De stirpe regum. Rot. Parl. vi. 278. By this unusual expression I conceive was meant the kings of each line. Ibid.

3

the late monarch and his supporters have offended the majesty of the earl of Richmond, at a time when he had never publicly advanced any claim to the throne? The case differed from the precedents of the past reigns. If Henry VI. and his friends had been pronounced traitors by Edward, and Edward and his adherents by Henry, on each occasion the supposed offence had been committed against a king, whose claim to the crown had been previously admitted by parliament'. But the treasury was now exhausted: Henry wanted the means to defray his expenses, and to reward his followers: and in defiance of the murmurs of the people, Richard III., the duke of Norfolk, the earl of Surrey, the lords Lovell, Zouch, and Ferrers, with several knights and gentlemen, amounting in all to thirty individuals, were included in an act of attainder2. 4°. The act of resumption which followed, was less invidious and equally politic. Treading in the footsteps of former monarchs, the king revoked all grants made by the crown since the 34th of Henry VI., and as the grantees were chiefly the partizans of the house of York, they were all placed at the mercy of the king, who, according to his judgment or caprice, had it in his power to take from them, or to confirm to them, the possession of their property 3. 5o. Before he dissolved the parliament, he granted a general pardon to the adherents of Richard: but that he might monopolize the whole merit of the measure, he would not allow it to originate at the intercession, or

3

'Cont. Croyl. 581. - 2 Rot. Parl. vi. 275–278. In the act Richard is accused of « unnatural, mischevous, and grete perjuries, treasons, homicides, and murdres in shedding of infants blood. »> Is not this an allusion to the death of his nephews? I know of no other infants, whom he is said to have murdered. 3 Rot. Parl. vi. 336--384.

"

1486.

Jan. 18.

Papal dispensation of mar

riage.

to be issued with the concurrence, of the two houses'.

6o. During the recess after Christmas, he married Elizabeth 2. It was believed that the delay arose from a desire to prevent her name from being inserted in the act of settlement. When that point had been obtained, he hastened to gratify the wishes of his people and parliament. If the ambition of the princess was flattered by this union, we are told (on what authority I know not) that she had little reason to congratulate herself on the score of domestic happiness; that Henry treated her with harshness and with neglect: and that in his estimation neither the beauty of her person, nor the sweetness of her disposition, could atone for the deadly crime of being a descendant of the house of York. 3

As the king and queen were relatives, a dispensation had been granted, previously to the marriage, by the bishop of Imola, the legate of Innocent VIII. But Henry applied for another to the pontiff himself, avowedly for the purpose of removing every doubt respecting the validity of the marriage, but in reality that by introducing into it the meaning which he affixed to the act of settlement, that meaning might have the sanction of the papal authority. Innocent in his rescript informs us, that, according to the representation made to him in the name of the king, the

I Bacon, 9.

' Cont. Croyl. 581. André tells us that Edward IV. had before offered Elizabeth to Henry during his exile in Bretagne, but that it was considered as an artifice to entice him into England. Domit. A. XVIII.

3 This is asserted by all our historians. The reader will meet hereafter with some reasons to induce a belief, that the statement, to be true, must at least be confined to the first years of the king's reign.