Henry had crushed the second
Yorkist revolt against his rule, but there remained a third before his grip on
the country became one of steel. When Margaret of Burgundy heard of Henry’s
victory at Stoke Field, she was beside herself. Lincoln’s maneuverings had been
the best bet to reclaim the English throne, and besides that she was out of a
lot of money paid to dead mercenaries. Just as Henry wouldn’t back down from
the throne, so she wasn’t finished lunging for it. The third uprising, which
would last nearly half a decade and was started by Perkin Warbeck in 1491, was
yet another case of ‘identity theft’: Margaret coached Warbeck to impersonate
the missing Prince Richard, the younger son of Edward IV who had disappeared
after being imprisoned in the Tower. Warbeck, impersonating Prince Richard,
claimed to have been rescued before his brother was murdered in the Tower.
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| Perkin Warbeck |
Warbeck launched three
invasions of England, each time with the support of major foreign powers; at
one time or another, he was supported by France, Austria, and Scotland—and all
this besides powerful lords and nobles in both England and Ireland. These
invasions, however, were scarce more than plunging raids through the English
countryside; Warbeck’s forces were small, and he wisely avoided a pitched
battle with the king’s men. During one of Warbeck’s R&Rs in Burgundy, Henry
demanded Margaret turn him over; when she refused, he severed all trade links
with Flanders despite the crippling affect this measure would have on the
English economy. Given Henry’s penchant for pursuing peace and prosperity
through commercial avenues, his cutting of trade showcases his irritation at
Warbeck’s scheming.
Yorkist propaganda painted
Warbeck as the returned Prince Richard, and this propaganda seeped through London
and even infected Henry’s court. Sir William Stanley, who had been present with
Lord Stanley at Bosworth Field, made a grave mistake when he said that if
Warbeck was the young Prince Richard,
he couldn’t bring himself to raise a hand against him. When word of his comment
reached the king, Henry was furious—and worried. If the real Prince Richard had survived, he would be a better
claimant to the throne and would arouse support even among Lancastrians. Henry
couldn’t bear the thought of Yorkist propaganda undoing his laurels at Bosworth
and Stoke, and he plotted Stanley’s demise. When one of his advisors reminded
him that it was Stanley’s timely intervention that had saved his life at
Bosworth, Henry retorted that it was also
Stanley’s timely inactivity that led to him being hemmed in by the late king’s
cavalry in the first place. Stanley’s comment couldn’t be forgiven; Yorkist
propaganda couldn’t be allowed to take root in his sacred court and spread like
a poison through his most ardent supporters: Stanley was arrested and executed
in early 1495.
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| Beaulieu Abbey |
Five months after Stanley’s
fall, Warbeck launched an invasion of Ireland and besieged Waterford. He
couldn’t take the city, so he abandoned the siege and sailed for Scotland where
King James IV welcomed him with open arms. The Scottish king forged an alliance
with Warbeck and married him to his cousin Lady Katherine Gordon. Together they
planned an invasion of northern England, but it never took place. Warbeck
returned to Ireland while the Scots raided England’s northern border. Warbeck
rallied his supporters and sailed back across the Irish Sea and invaded
England. Henry summoned his royal army, and when his army approached, Warbeck
lost his nerve and fled, claiming sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey. He knew what had
happened to the Stafford brothers and didn’t feel secure; surrounded by enemies
and outnumbered, his only option, short of suicide, was submitting himself to
the king’s mercy. He surrendered and threw himself before the king. Henry, who
had a reputation for leniency, granted him mercy, but he kept him and his
Scottish wife close at hand in his court. Warbeck would yet pay for his
treachery.
Perkins Warbeck, and the rebels
before him, had found support from Margaret of Burgundy. That support had set
off a chain of events culminating in a trade embargo that chafed against
Henry’s aspirations for a commercially vibrant England. The greater threat to
his reign, however, was Yorkist aspirations, so he sought to strangle Margaret
while tabling for later commercial prosperity with the Low Countries.
The Black Death in the late
1300s had ransacked Europe, and though England had suffered, she hadn’t
suffered to the extent that those on the continent did. The Black Death’s
scourge paved the way to an agricultural depression; as great swathes of people
died, the laborers needed for planting and harvest dwindled. Though there were
less mouths to feed, there was more than ever a need for labor. England’s
population flourished after the plague: though the population in the 14th
century had dropped as low as two and a half million, by the turn of the 17th
century it would nearly double to four million. England’s needs resulted in an
economic revolution as yeoman farmers, sheep growers, and urban cloth
manufacturers stepped to the forefront. The Merchant Adventurers, an
association of London cloth exporters, controlled the London-Antwerp market.
This market was an essential component of English trade, but, as we have seen,
it suffered a trade embargo as a result of Henry’s ‘punishment’ of Margaret of
Burgundy. He relocated the Merchant Adventurers from Antwerp to Calais and
ejected Flemish merchants from England.
The embargo could’ve crippled
the English economy, but as Margaret’s power waned, Henry and the Duke of
Burgundy started talking peace. The Duke craved trade with England (his
territory was suffering grievously from the embargo), and he saw no reason to
deprive Burgundy of what she needed in a fruitless bickering over who sat on
the English throne. He, unlike Margaret, had no bone in the matter. The same
year that Warbeck’s misadventures came to an end at the swift jerk of a rope,
Burgundy and England made peace and forged the Intercursus Magnus, a landmark commercial treaty between England
and the Low Countries that fostered freer trade. The Intercursus Magnus granted trade privileges to English and Flemings
and established fixed duties, which promoted English exports and filled Henry’s
treasury. Henry insisted that he wouldn’t sign the document, favorable to both
parties, without Margaret of Burgundy’s official acceptance of the legitimacy
of his Tudor Dynasty. All her Yorkist schemes had come to nothing, her power
had diminished, and she saw no benefit in standing against Burgundy’s
prosperity. She acquiesced.
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| a replica of John Cabot's sailing ship |
The Intercursus Magnus was a double victory for Henry: it furthered
English trade and prosperity, and it put to rest Margaret’s machinations
against the throne. The Magnus was a
natural outworking of Henry’s belief that he’d need to be strong in wealth (and
in the ability to showcase that wealth) to legitimize his reign and put a cork
in the dynastic struggles that had ransacked England’s nobility. If the crown
had wealth, it would be less dependent upon parliament and creditors, giving
the king a freer hand. To this end he avoided war and reshaped the royal
administration: the Royal Council was reborn as the Court of the Star Chamber
and tasked with judicial concerns, and order was promoted in Wales and in
northern England by the establishment of special councils and broader powers
for the justices of the peace. A more efficient handling of governmental
bureaucracy would aid in the accumulation of wealth; to this end Henry
asserted, almost ruthlessly, his royal fiscal rights (legal fees, fines, and
feudal dues), and he had royal revenue paid into the chamber of household,
where he and trusted officials could oversee it (it used to go into the
Exchequer, but the Exchequer seemed to be filled with ‘holes’ where money liked
to disappear). He increased revenue by encouraging exports and protecting the
home industry; promoting trade with neighboring countries; and enforcing the
Navigation Acts which ensured English goods were carried in English-owned
ships. Henry also sponsored the Italian navigator John Cabot and his sons in
their voyages of discovery in the New World; he hoped they would find riches
like Portugal and Spain had in south and central America, but all he found was
a North America densely populated with native Americans. Nevertheless, Cabot’s
1497 sally along the North American coast was the earliest European exploration
of North America since the Norse adventures in Newfoundland and the Gulf of St.
Lawrence (called ‘Vinland’ by the Norse) in the eleventh century.
Henry’s maneuvers enabled him
to leave a fortune to his eventual heir, his second-born son Henry VIII.
Furthermore, as one historian notes, “The combined impact of Henry VII’s
reforms would increase significantly the power of the King and open the way for
medieval rule, with its local laws and customs, to be gradually supplanted by a
more centralised Tudor state.”
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