Henry s Methods of Obtaining Money

The accumulation of wealth became almost a mania with Henry VII, and as parliamentary grants generally proved insufficient, he was compelled to resort to other means whereby to increase his revenues. He does not appear to have been a miser, for he was liberal at times and loved ostentatious display; but he valued a large treasure for the independence that it gave to the crown and the strength that it gave to the state. On his accession, parliament granted him for life the customs on wine and general merchandise, known as tonnage and poundage, and several times afterward granted him subsidies of a tenth and a fifteenth. But subsidies were unpopular, as is seen from the fact that in 1488 a revolt broke out in the north, and again in 1497 in Cornwall, as a protest against these grants. Henry, therefore, preferred to make forced exactions from the rich by demanding benevolences or loans, which were originally free gifts.

John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, the king's very able chancellor, adopted a method of collecting these loans that is known as Morton's Fork. He instructed the commissioners, says Bacon, "that if they met any that were sparing they should tell them they needs must have, because they laid up ; and if they were spenders they needs must have, because it was seen in their port and manner of living : so neither kind came amiss." Later Henry profited by the methods of Empson and Dudley, barons of the exchequer, who revived the old feudal dues and caused those who infringed the feudal rights of the king to be heavily fined. With the exception of James I, Henry was the last king to demand an aid on the occasion of the marriage of an eldest daughter, and this he did when Margaret married the king of Scotland in 1502. He confiscated the lands and treasure of those who engaged in the conspiracies against him, as in the case of Sir William Stanley; and engaged in royal commercial ventures that brought him in profit. Little wonder that at his death he should have left to his son a hoard of money, estimated at nearly $100,000,000 modern money.

Commerce, Agriculture, and Colonization

Though Henry extracted large sums from those who could afford to pay, he was very careful to favor the wealth-producing classes in the kingdom, and he showed his progressive spirit by his attitude toward commerce, industry, and agriculture. Like Louis XI of France, he was a true bourgeois king, a king of the merchants. Through his efforts, England made important progress as a commercial state, carrying in her own vessels the staple articles of the kingdom and trafficking freely in foreign ports. In 1489 Henry gave new life to English shipping by requiring that all wine and woad from Gascony should be imported in vessels owned by English merchants and manned by English sailors. He did all that he could to encourage the Merchant Adventurers, and gave them, in 1505, for the first time, a monopoly of the privileges of Continental trade. Before that time, by a series of commercial treaties, he had opened to them some of the ports of the Baltic, North Sea, and Mediterranean, such as Riga (1489), Iceland (1490), Florence (1490), Burgundy (1495), Netherlands (by the Magnus Intercursus in 1496), and Brittany (1497). Through these means England was able to extend her commerce and to develop a navy.

Regarding agriculture Henry's policy was a simple one. Desiring to increase the number of small farmers, on the ground that the farmer or yeoman class was a source of strength to the state, he attempted to check the conversion of arable lands into pasture. In 1489 parliament passed an act for this purpose, but it did not have any effect, and the destruction of small farms and the enclosing of land for pasture and for better farming purposes went on for half a century longer.

Henry did not enter into the larger field of discovery, and at the time when Portugal and Spain were sending explorers to the southern and western Atlantic, he rejected the opportunity to help Columbus discover a new world. He did, however, encourage John Cabot, a Genoese settled in Bristol, England's chief maritime city, and granted to him in 1496 such lands as he should discover to the west, east, and north of England, together with a monopoly of the commerce of those regions. Cabot sailed in 1497, on exactly what day is uncertain, and reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.' He made a second voyage in February, 1498, of which little is known, but from which he safely returned in the autumn of that year. Upon John Cabot's first voyage rested England's title to lands in America. Henry did not, however, do anything to make good the English claims, but recognized Spain's title to all lands south of 41 north latitude. English navigators confined their attention to commerce in the East and to explorations in the northwest, and for a century England lagged behind Portugal, Spain, and France in the opening of the New World.

Henry s Foreign Alliances

Henry knew the value of good foreign connections as well as of foreign markets, and his reign, for that reason, opens a new era in England's diplomacy as well as in her commerce. In truth, the kings of France, Spain, Germany, and England were entering into new leagues and combinations unknown to the earlier period. Each was seeking to gain advantages at the expense of the others, and to form alliances by means of treaties and marriages that would make his position more secure. The chief rivalry lay between the king of France and the Emperor Maximilian. Charles VIII of France had invaded Italy in 1494 to make good the old claim of Charles of Anjou to the kingdom of Naples, and in 1499 Louis XII had done the same, seizing the duchy of Milan. Germany and Spain drew together, and Philip, son of Emperor Maximilian, married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Spain wished the friendship of England, and a marriage was arranged between Henry's oldest son, Arthur, and Joanna's younger sister, Catherine of Aragon. The marriage took place in 1501, but the next year Arthur died, and the negotiations were again opened. Henry was unwilling to lose Catherine's marriage portion, only half of which had been paid, while Ferdinand wished to continue the alliance, feeling that he would never get back from Henry the portion already paid. It is said that Henry thought of marrying his daughter-in-law himself, but finally Catherine was betrothed to the second son, Henry, afterward Henry VIII.

Thus Germany, Spain, and England were in alliance. Germany controlled the Netherlands, which had come to Maximilian through his marriage with Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, and were now in the hands of Philip the Handsome, their son. Every effort was made to draw Scotland, too, into the alliance. This was finally effected in 1502, when Henry's eldest daughter, Margaret, married James IV of Scotland, and thus, as events were to prove, laid the foundation of the Stuart claim to the throne of England, which was to be realized just one hundred years later.