sent to England, and not till he arrived was Philip allowed to go on his way. Philip died before Henry received Margaret as bride, and the English king thereupon gave up this match, and sought to wed Joan Queen of Castile, Philip's widow, although she was mad. The marriage between Charles and Mary also fell through, though there was much time spent in bargaining over it by the king's agents abroad. At home Henry worked chiefly through two of his councillors, Robert Dudley, a Warwickshire squire, and Richard Empson, the son of a sievemaker. Bold men, careless of scorn, hated by the people as the king's "horseleeches and skin-shearers," they busied themselves in filling the treasury and their own pockets, by making men pay heavy fees for the privilege of being tried; by extorting large sums for charters of pardon; by fining jurymen for their sentences; by setting men (whom the people nicknamed promoters and questmongers) to seek out those who had broken the laws in petty ways, and either frighten them into paying highly to be let off, or condemn them without mercy to excessive fines; by making corporations and guilds give enormous sums to allow their privileges and by-laws to stand. By which unjust doings the king, at his death, had more than £1,800,000 gathered in secret places under his own key. Twice when he felt ill and near his end, he showed that he knew of the evil ways by which his servants had amassed money for him, for he ordered the petty debtors who filled the prisons to be set free, and bade the judges hear complaints against his councillors. And on his deathbed he wished what he had unjustly gotten to be given back, but as long as he was well he did not check the wickedness going on in his name. On April 22, 1509, he died at Richmond, in the palace he had built. He lies in the fair chapel he made for his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

An exile or a prisoner from the age of five till he won his crown, Henry grew up serious, silent, suspicious, and reserved, neither hating nor loving, but using his fellow-creatures with no closer care than his own well-being, no deeper religion than a regard for his own soul. He is described as of middle height, spare built, with a long pale face, grey eyes, dark brown hair, and a red wart on the right cheek. He loved fine clothes and glittering pageants. In his search for wealth, it is worth noting that he risked a little money in sending Sebastian Gabato on a voyage to the New World.

CHAPTER VII.

England in the Fifteenth Century.

1. During this century the constitution was little changed. The long wars abroad and troubles at home left the king and nobles scant space for reforms. The rulers of the

Power of the

The

house of Lancaster made a show of great respect to Parliament, but it was under Henry VI. that the power of voting in the counties was denied to all those who had not a freehold worth 40s. a year. The wish to let old disputes sleep made the first king of the house of York call as few parliaments as possible, and indeed Council. men wanted neither fresh taxes nor new laws, Star Chamber. but a strong prince who would see the old laws kept, and be mindful that justice was done as swiftly and cheaply as might be to rich and poor alike. To secure this, the king's Council held many sittings, and in the end one of its committees, to which the special duty of seeing to the keeping of the peace and the upholding of justice was trusted, became a regular court, with rules and rights of its own, under the name of the Star Chamber. It got this name from the blue star-painted roof of the room at Westminster in which it was held. Just as the Chancellor gave redress in his court to those who could not get it from the common law-courts in certain cases when their property was injured, so the Star Chamber took up those cases of criminal wrongdoing which the common law-courts could not or would not attend to. And those who strove to prevent a man from getting justice, or banded together against their neighbours, or fostered quarrels and kept up feuds, or, as jurymen, gave verdicts against the evidence they had heard and the oath they had sworn, were brought before the Star Chamber and fined or imprisoned. But the Star Chamber could not touch a man's life or lands as the common law-courts could, because its sentence was not given by a judge according to the finding of a jury in the old English fashion, but settled by the votes of the councillors upon their secret examination of the prisoner and the witnesses in the manner of the Roman Law. Now that the Council was so strong, little by little it began to use the bad foreign plan of torturing prisoners to make them tell what they knew, and it is said that the Duke of Exeter started it, for he had seen it used in France. But as yet none were tortured who were not open evildoers; and so, though the duke got

as ill a name for cruelty to prisoners as Tiptoft had won for maiming and mocking dead men's bodies, men did not blame the Council, and at this time were glad that the Star Chamber was strong and active enough to deal with many a powerful law-breaker, who, under the weak rule of Henry VI., would have got off scot-free.

The Church rich,

and not reform

ing itself.

2. As for the Church, the bishops and abbots and priors withstood all ideas of reform from without, and were too busy over fighting heresy, managing their growing property, and working the Church courts, to bestir themselves in the matter. But though the failure of Sir John Oldcastle's plan made it dangerous to meddle with Lollardy, there were not a few who, like Sir John Fastolf, saw that things could not go on so with the Church for ever. We find that there was growing up, in quiet, a deep discontent against the greedy courts, the worldly lives, and the enormous and ill-spent wealth of the clergy. The bishops met this not only by burning heretics, but by founding colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, where the young clergy might be brought up in their own views. Gascoyne, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, has spoken plainly upon the evils of the Church in his day in his note-book, and the popular songs show small respect for the friars. Even the learned book of Bishop Peacock against Wycliff was so bold in starting new views on the faith and life of the Church, that he was deprived of his bishopric, and imprisoned as a heretic in 1459.

3. The fifteenth century was a flourishing time for English farmers and merchants. The seasons were fair, the crops good, the seas were safer than before, and the demand for English goods never slackened. The customary rents being now paid at a fixed sum of money instead of in kind [that is, in corn or cattle or labour], and the practice largely used by landlords of stocking and letting small farms to leaseholders at low rates, the yeoman, copyholder, and farmer were all able to profit by the good years, and glad to do their best by their land, knowing that their labour would benefit themselves. By 1450 the land was better tilled and yielded larger crops than before the Black Death. In the towns, in spite of the losses by war and pirates, and the foolish debasement of the money by Henry V., Henry VI., and Edward IV. (which, of course, tended to hamper foreign trade), merchants and workmen did well. The craftguilds were now at the height of their power and useful

Prosperity of

yeomen, crafts

men, and

merchants.

ness, they secured their members against many of the misfortunes that might befall them, encouraged self-help and kindly fellowship, rewarded thrift, kept prices steady, prevented sudden transfers of labour from trade to trade, discouraged extravagant profits, and kept a watch over the conduct of the craftsmen and the kind of work they turned out. Our foreign trade also largely increased, as might be guessed from the treaties of commerce with Brittany, Castile, Portugal, Florence, Flanders, and the Hansa or Trading League of the Baltic towns, made by Henry IV., Edward IV., and Henry VII. Shipbuilding flourished, and John Taverner of Hull launched the biggest vessel yet built in England, for his use in the North Sea trade. All kinds of ships (carvels, barges, balingers, cogs, and crayers) sail from English ports with wool, corn, lead, tin, honey, and hides, and even such manufactured goods as saddlery, hardware, and guns. They come back to England laden with wine, wood, alum, bowstaves, spices, and dried fruits. Not only did English goods fill the great fairs of Brabant, Flanders, and Zealand, but London and Southampton were marts to which the long galleys of Florence and Venice brought paper, Greek wine and sugar, Eastern stuffs and silk, turquoises, and balas rubies, which were paid for partly in wool and partly in silver. New trades grew up, Ireland supplied furs and dried hake and strong coarse cloths-frize and serges and falding. In 1414 William Canning and other northern merchants brought the Iceland trade from the east coast to Bristol, and, in spite of the Danes' ill-will, soon got hold of the market there, buying stock-fish and eider-down and brimstone, and selling wine and grain and timber in return. The Merchant Adventurers had their factory, or tradinghouse at Bergen, side by side with that of the Easterlings. The English kings began to keep up a fleet; Henry V., like his great-grandfather, Edward III., built a large ship, called the Grace Dieu, and the Lord High Admiral, who had a court of his own to try crimes committed at sea, was cne of the chief officers of the Crown.

4. There were perhaps fewer great buildings raised in England at this time, but numbers of country and town houses, college buildings, chapels, town churches, and additions to older cathedrals, castles, and palaces remain to show the taste of the century. The style of Perpendicular these is called perpendicular, from the great use architecture in made of right angles and upright lines in its buildings. It is known by its flat arches, square-headed

England.

windows and doors, square-panelled walling, lofty pinnacles, low-pitched roofs, large broad window-lights, and elaborate ceilings delicately wrought with heavy carved pendants and thickly ribbed vaulting. The use of red and black brick for flat walling was increasing in the latter part of the century. The college at Eton of Henry VI.'s foundation, the chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster, the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford (early in the 16th century), built by Wolsey, and the same churchman's later palace buildings at Hampton Court, and college hall and choir roof at Christ Church, the Divinity School at Oxford, and the tower of Gloucester Cathedral, are fine examples of this style, which was more widely spread and used in England than in any continental country.

Dress of the

5. Change in architecture is nearly always a proof of a general change in taste, and so it was now, as folks' dress showed. The mantle and hood of the fourteenth century were disused, save by judges, mayors, bishops, and such great dignitaries. The dress of the men of the middle and upper classes was a long cloth gown with large sleeves, often furlined in winter at edge and wrist, girt with a narrow leather belt, from which hung the wearer's straight, broad-bladed, double-edged, ivory-hilted knife, his gypser [pouch], silvermounted and silk-knotted, and his set or pair afteenth century of large beads with a signet-ring at their tassel. in England. Late in the century Edward IV. delighted in huge open sleeves, turned back on the shoulder, to show the rich lining of velvet or sable. Below this the short closebuttoned tunic, now called a doublet, and long cloth hose were worn as before. The hood in Henry IV.'s day was often worn as a cap, the face-hole fitting the crown of the head, while the neck-tippet hung down as a scarf, and the pipe of the hood wound round the flattened head part kept it in shape. Later it was twisted into a scarf, and buttoned to the shoulder of the gown. Men's head-gear was a tight skull-cap of velvet or cloth, and over this, in public or out-of-doors, a "broad bonnet," with jewel clasp and plume. This bonnet was simply the older tall coneshaped beaver hat with its edges turned up all round and kept in place by a buckle of bronze or silver, and its top flattened into a broad crown. Sometimes only the back was turned up; the front edge then formed a peak, and shaded the eyes. Beneath the gown a short tight tunic was worn, and long, tight cloth hose; the shoes were often peaked into long curling toe-pieces. High Spanish boots