The Revenues and the Coinage

In his campaigns in Scotland and in his attempts to subdue Ireland, Henry had been constantly embarrassed for want of money. He had been extravagant, but his extravagance was not the only cause for the scarcity of money. The truth is, the royal revenues had declined. With the growth of trade the returns from land had grown less, for the subsidies, fifteenths and tenths, levied after the ancient fashion, had not increased with the wealth of the kingdom, and Henry VIII and the sovereigns that followed him did riot, in reality, receive a revenue at all proportionate to the actual taxing power of the nation, and had to resort to exceptional and illegal methods of raising money.

Henry, in desperation, began to tamper with the coinage, first, by mixing more and more alloy with the gold and silver, and later, by reducing the size of the coin. Silver coins were debased more than the gold, and, consequently, gold was exported to the Continent, until, by the end of Henry's reign, scarcely any gold coins remained in England. The effects of this debasing of the coinage were very disastrous. Prices rose rapidly in England, to the disadvantage of the landowning and agricultural classes, and commerce was injured, because foreigners would not take English coins. This blind and criminal policy caused great distress among the laboring classes, and beggary and robbery increased.

Henry s Influence

Henry VIII died in 1547, leaving his throne by will to his son Edward, who was to be succeeded in turn by his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. Henry was a king who accomplished much for England, for he supplemented the work of his father by raising the kingdom to a position of international importance, and by striking down the last of the old nobility and giving power into the hands of new men who came from the middle classes. Then, too, he was " the majestic lord who broke the bonds of Rome." But the results of his work were beneficial only in the future ; the immediate consequences of his reign were disastrous. At home he had alienated the English people, emptied the royal treasury, neglected the welfare of the great mass of his subjects, and encouraged bribery and corruption among officials and ministers. Abroad he had broken with almost every ally. The pope, Francis, and Charles V were hostile to him, and conspiracies were fomenting in Ireland, Scotland, and on the Continent. The favorable conditions that had accompanied his accession to the throne no longer existed when, in 1547, he passed on the government of the kingdom to his son, a boy but ten years of age.

The Howards and the Seymours

The man who wielded the unlimited power of Henry VIII was not to be the young Edward VI, but his uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, later known as the duke of Somerset. During Henry's last years a rivalry had sprung up between two families, the Seymours and the Howards. The former had been brought into prominence by the marriage of Henry with Jane Seymour, who had been lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon and her successor, Anne Boleyn. Edward Seymour was Jane Seymour's brother, and after the birth of Edward VI he had been created earl of Hertford; while another brother, Thomas Seymour, had taken an important part in Henry's wars. The best known representative of the Howards was Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, uncle of Anne Boleyn and of Catherine Howard, the king's fifth wife. Thomas's son was Henry, Earl of Surrey, known in literature as a poet. Both families were, therefore, connected with the king by marriage, and both were rivals for the king's favor. The Howards were of the more honorable lineage, leaders of the old nobility, and upholders of the old faith; the Seymours were newer men, and friends of the reform movement.

In the struggle that followed between the two families, victory lay eventually with the Seymours. They were the uncles of the king's only son, and had found favor with Catherine Parr, the king's last wife, who was half a Protestant. The Howards, on the other hand, had been unlucky. Both their nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII, had been executed. In 1546 Surrey had been convicted of treason and sent to the block ; and Norfolk also would have been beheaded but for the king's death in 1547. The fall of the Howards cleared the way for the ascendency of the Seymours.