offended him, was arraigned as a murderer at the king's bench, and commanded to plead the king's pardon. His pride could not brook this indignity; and the court of his aunt, the dutchess of Burgundy, received the fugitive. Henry, who, on what grounds I know not, is represented as desirous to inveigle him into greater indiscretions, prevailed on him to return. At the marriage of the prince of Wales, he vied in the splendour of his equipage and his attentions to the royal family, with the most opulent and favoured of the nobility and then, to the astonishment of the public, fled a second time, with his brother Richard, to the court of his aunt. Henry immediately forboded an insurrection. Sir Robert Curson was dispatched to act the part of a spy under the mask of friendship: and in a few weeks the earl's brother William de la Pole, the lord Courtney, who had married one of the late queen's sisters, sir William Wyndham, and sir James Tyrrel, with a few others, were apprehended'. To the two first no other crime could be objected than their relationship to the fugitive: the other two were condemned and executed for having favoured the escape of the king's enemy; and all were afterwards attainted by parliament. By this act of vigour the conspiracy, if

I

It was on this occasion that Tyrrel confessed the murder of Edward V. and his brother in the Tower. More, 68.

2 Rot. Parl. 545. The forfeiture was to take place from the 1st of July, 1499. If then, as our writers say, Wyndham and Tyrrel were executed for aiding the flight of Suffolk, it must have been on the first, and not the second time that he fled to the continent. I may remark that the charge of treason against them is laid on the 1st of July, that against the earl of Warwick and Warbeck on the 2d of August of the same year. Ibid. Was there any connexion between the two?

1499. July 1.

1502.

March.

May 6.

any conspiracy existed, was suppressed in its birth: and Suffolk, left in extreme penury by the death of his aunt, after wandering for a time in Germany, had been permitted by the archduke Philip to reside in his dominions.

Henry now demanded of that prince the surrender of the fugitive. It was in vain that he pleaded his honour: he was given to know that he was himself a captive, and could only purchase his liberty by consenting to the captivity of the earl. Compelled to yield, he exacted from Henry a promise that he would respect the life of Suffolk, and on the surrender of the fugitive was permitted to prosecute his voyage. The earl was sent to the Tower. Though Henry thirsted for his blood, he Mar. 16. feared to violate his engagement with Philip : but before his death he left an order for the execution of his victim as a legacy to the filial piety of his successor. '

1505.

New pro

riage.

Philip was only one of the parties interested in jects of mar- the marriage of his sister Margaret. The consent of Maximilian and Ferdinand was also requisite : but while Henry was negociating with these princes, Philip died; and his widow Juana, in her own right queen of Castile, appeared to the imagination of the king a still more desirable bride. There were indeed two obstacles to be surmounted, which would have de-. terre dany other suitor. Juana laboured under a derangement of intellect, which rendered her incapable of giving her consent and Ferdinand, her guardian, would naturally oppose any measure which might deprive him of the government of her dominions. But Henry was not discouraged. He relinquished the pursuit of Margaret; contended that the malady of Juana was only temporary, occasioned by the bad usage which she 'Hall, 54, 55. Speed, 999-994. Fab. 533.

had received from her last husband; and trusted to his own ingenuity to remove the objections of her father. That prince unwilling to irritate a prince whom it was his interest to flatter, had recourse to delay: he represented the present state of his daughter's mind; he promised that if, on her recovery of her reason, she could be induced to marry, the king of England should be her husband. But Henry was suspicious of the king's sincerity: he insisted that his ambassador Astill should speak to the queen in private, and receive an answer from her own mouth; and apprehensive that his son's attachment to Catharine might lead to a clandestine union, he forbad them to see each other, treated the princess with severity, and endeavoured to subdue the obstinacy of the father by punishing the innocence of his daughter'. However, the malady of Juana experienced no abatement. Henry desisted from his hopeless pursuit, and, accepting the apologies of Ferdinand for his delay in the payment of the marriage portion, concluded with him a new treaty, by which the Spanish monarch was bound to transmit to London one hundred thousand crowns in four half-yearly instalments, and Henry to permit the solemnisation of the marriage on the arrival of the last. Two were received by the king at the appointed time: he died before the arrival of the third. Perhaps I should apologize to the reader for

'Catharine, in her letters to her father, professed to have no great inclination for a second marriage in England, but requested that her sufferings and wishes might be kept out of view. No gustaba la princesa de casar segunda vez en Inglaterra. Asi lo dio a entender al rey su padre : cuando le supplicaba en lo que tocaba a su casamiento no mirase su gusto ni comodidad, sino solo lo que a el y sus cosas conveniese bien. Mariana, Hist. l. xx. c. 17.

The English historians seem entirely ignorant of the causes

1508.

April.

Sept.

The king's schemes to get money.

this long and tedious detail: but the important controversy to which the marriage of Henry and Catharine gave birth, and the still more important consequences to which that controversy led, have imparted an interest to every circumstance which originally impeded or facilitated their union.

II. While the king sought by foreign alliances to add to the security of his family, he was equally solicitous to amass riches at the expense of his subjects. What they termed avarice, he denominated policy; observing that to deprive his adversaries of their wealth was to take from them the means of annoyance. But Henry's rapacity was not very scrupulous in its selection : it fed with equal appetite on his friends and his enemies. The men whom he employed as the agents of oppression, were sir Richard Empson, and Edmund Dudley, both lawyers, of inventive heads, and unfeeling hearts; who despoiled the subject to fill the king's coffers, and despoiled the king to enrich themselves. The following are the chief of the numerous expedients by which they extorted money. 1. In the lapse of centuries the rigour of the feudal tenures had been gradually relaxed, and during the civil dissensions of the two roses many prestations had been suffered to sink into desuetude. But these ministers revived all the dormant claims of the crown; exacted with severity the payment of arrears; discovered which for so many years delayed the marriage of Henry and Catharine. For the preceding narrative I have had recourse to the Spanish historians Zurita and Mariana, and have compared their statements with extracts from the original documents preserved among the records at Simancas, which have been copied for me by a friend in Spain. The receipts for the money in 1508 are signed by both Henries, the father and the son. The third payment was made to the young king in May, and the last in September 1509.

and enforced forgotten causes of forfeiture; and extended the feudal services to estates holden by different tenures. 2. The ancient statutes had created a multitude of offences punishable by fine, imprisonment, and forfeiture, and had enacted the same penalties against officers who had failed in the execution of their duty. Under these two heads hosts of informers were employed to cull out fit subjects for prosecution: and when the real or supposed delinquent was brought before Empson or Dudley (they were barons of the exchequer), unless he consented to pay an exorbitant fine, he was committed to prison. New offers of composition were made to him, while he lingered in custody on his refusal he was brought to trial: and at his trial a verdict was invariably found for the crown, by a jury previously packed for the purpose. 3. Outlawry was the general consequence of non-appearance in personal actions; but was always reversed, on the payment by the party of a moderate fine. These harpies had the ingenuity to muliply such proceedings, and the cruelty to wring from their victims the full amount of a year's income. By these arts, and others of a similar description, every class of subjects was harassed and impoverished, while a constant stream of wealth passed through the hands of Empson and Dudley, of which a part only was suffered to reach the treasury; the remainder they diverted to their own coffers. '

If we may credit a story related by Bacon, Henry was not less adroit, or less unfeeling than his two ministers. Of the partisans of the house of Lancaster, there was no one whose exertions or sacrifices had been greater than those of the earl of Essex. That nobleman on one Fabian, 534-536. Hall, 57, 58. Bacon, 119-121.