Читать книгу History of the Reformation - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 13

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By the time that the Duke of Richmond had ascended the English throne and ruled with “politic governance” as Henry vii., the distinctively modern history of England had begun. Feudalism had perished on the field of the battle of Bosworth. The visitations of the Black Death, the gigantic agricultural labour strike under Wat Tylor and priest Ball, and the consequent transformation of peasant serfs into a free people working for wages, had created a new England ready for the changes which were to bridge the chasm between mediæval and modern history. The consolidation of the people was favoured by the English custom that the younger sons of the nobility ranked as commoners, and that the privileges as well as the estates went to the eldest sons. This kept the various classes of the population from becoming stereotyped into castes, as in Germany, France, and Spain. It tended to create an ever-increasing middle class, which was not confined to the towns, but permeated the country districts also. The younger sons of the nobility descended into this middle class, and the transformation of the serfs into a wage-earning class enabled some of them to rise into it. England was the first land to become a compact nationality.

The earlier portion of the reign of Henry vii. was not free from attempts which, if successful, would have thrown the country back into the old condition of disintegration. Although the king claimed to unite the rival lines of York and Lancaster, the Yorkists did not cease to raise difficulties at home which were eagerly fostered from abroad. Ireland was a Yorkist stronghold, and Margaret, the dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward iv., exercised a sufficiently powerful influence in Flanders to make that land a centre of Yorkist intrigue.

Lambert Simnel, a pretender who claimed to be either the son or the nephew of Edward iv. (his account of himself varied), appeared in Ireland, and the whole island gathered round him. He invaded England, drew to his standard many of the old Yorkists, but was defeated at Stoke-on-Trent in 1487. This was really a formidable rebellion. The rising under Perkin Warbeck, a young Burgundian from Tournay, though supported by Margaret of Burgundy and James iv. of Scotland, was more easily suppressed. A popular revolt against severe taxation was subdued in 1497, and it may be said that Henry's home difficulties were all over by the year 1500. England entered the sixteenth century as a compact nation.

The foreign policy of Henry vii. was alliance with Spain and a long-sighted attempt to secure Scotland by peaceful means. It had for consequences two marriages which had far-reaching results. The marriage of Henry's daughter Margaret with James iv. of Scotland led to the union of the two crowns three generations later; and that between Katharine, the third daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and the son of Henry vii. came to be the occasion, if not the cause, of the revolt of England from Rome. Katharine was married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, in 1501 (November 14th). Prince Arthur died on January 14th, 1502. After protracted negotiation, lengthened by the unwillingness of the Pope (Pius iii.) to grant a dispensation, Katharine was contracted to Henry, and the marriage took place in the year of Prince Henry's accession to the crown. Katharine and Henry were crowned together at Westminster on June 28th, 1509.

England had prospered during the reign of the first Tudor sovereign. The steady increase in wool-growing and wool-exporting is in itself testimony to the fact that the period of internal wars had ceased, for sheep speedily become extinct when bands of raiders disturb the country. The growth in the number of artisan capitalists shows that money had become the possession of all classes in the community. The rise of the companies of merchant adventurers proves that England was taking her share in the world-trade of the new era. English scholars like Grocyn and Linacre (tutor in Italy of Pope Leo x. and in England of the Prince of Wales) had imbibed the New Learning in Italy, and had been followed there by John Colet, who caught the spirit of the Renaissance from the Italian Humanists and the fervour of a religious revival from Savonarola's work in Florence. The country had emerged from Mediævalism in almost everything when Henry viii., the hope of the English Humanists and reformers, ascended the throne in 1509.