Henry VII Read online

  3 On Suffolk’s movements, see Busch, op. cit. ch. v, and refs.

  1 There is no reliable evidence that the confession was ever made by Tyrell, or that it was ever published, as it surely would have been if it had been made. The most that can be said is that it appears that Henry VII let it be known that Tyrell had confessed before he was executed, and the reasons for his so doing are obvious enough, as indicated above. The essential incredibility of the whole story as embroidered and enlarged upon by Sir Thomas More in his Richard III, and vaguely referred to by Polydore Vergil and the Great chronicle, was fully exposed by P. M. Kendall, Richard the Third (1955), 398–406. For the attainders of Suffolk and Tyrell, and fifteen others, see R.P., VI, 545. In this parliament of 1504, the king announced that he did not intend to summon another parliament without ‘grete necessarye and urgent causes’, ibid. 526.

  1 Archduke Philip and his wife set sail on 7 January 1506, but their fleet was scattered by a storm and his ship was driven ashore at Melcombe Regis near Wey-mouth on 16 January. Elaborate arrangements for their hospitality were made as soon as possible. They did not leave England until 23 April. Among the agreements reached was that neither party should harbour any rebels against the other. On 16 March, Suffolk was handed over at Calais and conveyed to England on 24 March. Busch, op. cit. 192. For the treaty with the archduke, see below, p. 290.

  2 Richard de la Pole had escaped to Hungary in the summer of 1506, but later took service in France, and survived until 1525, when he was killed fighting for Francis I at Pavia.

  3 For a list of Yorkists and descendants who suffered execution under Henry VIII, and the later Tudors, see Chrimes, Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Henry VII, 2nd ed. (1966), 163, fn.

  PART II

  The Personnel and Machinery of Government

  Chapter 4

  THE KING’S COUNCIL

  Though the surviving records are sparse and inadequate, and the problems of detail probably insuperable,1 the difficulty of envisaging the council under Henry VII has been greatly, though unnecessarily, enhanced by historians’ misconceptions and reluctance to accept existing evidence realistically. It does not help our understanding of the council under Henry VII to look at it in the light of developments under Henry VIII. The first Tudor could only build his governmental structures on what existed in 1485, and it is to the then past, not the then unknowable future, that we have to look for the basis of our comprehension.

  If we examine the considerable material that has already been published relevant to the council in the time of Henry VII,2 nothing could be more obvious than the essential unity and flexibility of the council throughout the reign. The King’s Council was simply the king’s council;3 there was no court of Star Chamber; there were no committees of the council, and no statute created any such committee; there was no ‘whole’ council, no ‘privy’ council, no ‘inner’ council, no ‘attendant’ council, no offshoots in the North1 or Wales.2 The origins of the later Tudor Council of the North are attributed to the private council established by Richard, duke of Gloucester, as the greatest northern landowner. When he became king a council continued to exist as a kind of regional council vested with powers of administration and justice, and he clearly regarded it as a King’s Council in the Northern parts. Henry VII, however, does not appear to have followed this precedent, and no comparable institution appeared in his reign. He did not even revive the wardenship of the West March, but quickly restored Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, to the wardenship of the eastern March until his murder in 1489. Thereafter he appointed Prince Arthur as warden-general and Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, as his lieutenant. The warden appointed councillors with a president, but this was not the king’s council nor an offshoot thereof.

  The King’s Council, in the sense of ‘all the councillors’, never met at any time. All that was ever done by the council was done by groups of councillors, the composition of which varied greatly from time to time and according to the nature of the business and to whether the business was such that it recurred frequently. These groups were not committees of the council in any modern sense of the term. There is no evidence that the council, or anyone else, at this time, delegated or relegated any business to a committee of itself, and indeed it is very doubtful whether the conception of such a procedure existed. The King’s Council consisted of the king’s councillors, and any number of them might be used for the king’s purposes without in any way changing their status as members of the King’s Council. The fact that some might habitually attend to judicial business in the room commonly called (because of its ceiling décor) ‘Star Chamber’ did not create a ‘court of Star Chamber’ – the term except in a locative sense was almost never used in the reign of Henry VII.1 Star Chamber at this time was merely the convenient location for groups of king’s councillors to conduct their business, whether it was judicial or other kinds of business. Most judicial business, however, by its nature, needed a more or less fixed location if it was to be conducted in an orderly and practicable manner, but it could be conducted wherever the king or a suitable group of councillors might be. Usage and convenience might encourage the idea that judicial business would normally be conducted by some of the councillors sitting in Star Chamber, and seekers after justice often came to look for what they wanted there, but the truth remained exactly as the anonymous law book called Fleta had observed a hundred years and more earlier – rex habet curiam suam in concilio suo (the king has his court in his council).2 The fact that a particular group of councillors, considered to be especially well qualified for the tasks set them, and including among their number a high proportion of persons ‘learned in the law’, attracted to themselves the occasional label of ‘Council Learned’ did not make them a committee of the council; they were a part of the King’s Council who habitually gave their attention to particular tasks.3

  The most unfortunate labelling at a later date of the act of 1487 with the totally inappropriate words ‘Pro camera stellata’ bedevilled the historiography of the Tudor council for generations. No one now supposes that the act had anything to do with either the council or the court of Star Chamber,1 but the point also has to be made clear that it did not in any sense establish a committee of the council. What it did do was to establish a tribunal consisting of the three principal officers or two of them, who were required to call to their assistance a bishop and a temporal lord from among the king’s councillors, for the judicial purposes specified. The act of 1487, therefore, not only had nothing to do with Star Chamber, but also nothing to do with the King’s Council as such. Its only point was to establish a tribunal distinct from the council.2

  It is also an unfortunate circumstance that the evidence surviving for the judicial activities of council, although not very extensive, is much greater than that for the far more important and basic work of the king’s councillors, i.e., the work of giving the king counsel on any and all the multifarious affairs of state. This circumstance has resulted in a distortion of our picture of the council under Henry VII. For the king himself the essential importance of his councillors was not to be found in the efforts of some of them to supplement the jurisdictional labours of the common law courts, but in the efforts of all or any of them to aid him in reaching decisions in the pressing problems of government. It is a commonplace that no king could govern without the advice and counsel of councillors of some kind, and it seems a safe generalization to assert that Henry VII, coming to the throne in the way he did in 1485, stood in greater immediate need of counsel in affairs of state than any of his predecessors. For he came to it devoid of any personal experience of government of any kind. It is, therefore, to the King’s Council as an organ and instrument of government that we need to direct our attention first, whilst leaving its judicial activities for consideration where it properly belongs – under the heading of judicature.3

  The nucleus of what was to become Henry VII’s council was formed from the time when in Brittany he first began to assume overt pretensions t
o royal dignity, and this appears to have occurred early in 1484. A number of his close associates at that time1 remained his most confidential advisers for the rest of their lives, were after Bosworth appointed to offices, and figure among his councillors during his reign. It is not possible to say when exactly his formal council was established, if indeed there was at any time any specific establishment. Most likely the personnel were picked upon and added to the nucleus from time to time according to circumstances, and gradually as Henry made the acquaintance of likely persons or felt able to accept recommendations. Polydore Vergil’s notion2 that a council was constituted after the dissolution of the first parliament on 4 March 1486 cannot be accepted at its face value, although it may well be that after the parliament some opportunity may have been taken to publicize the names of some at least of the councillors. Henry clearly could not have done without councillors from the moment he took over the government, and in any case there is record evidence that a council was functioning formally in the first month of the reign.3

  Nor is there now any great difficulty in determining where Henry VII looked to obtain recruits to add to the nucleus of a council which he brought with him from Brittany and France. He looked and found a substantial number of them from the ranks of those who had had experience as councillors to either Edward IV or Richard III, or to both. No less than twenty-nine of his councillors had been councillors to one or other of the Yorkist kings, thirteen of them to both, nineteen of them to Richard III. Fifteen of his councillors were near relatives of Edward IV’s councillors, and others had prominent administrative careers under the Yorkist regime.4 Evidently Henry VII was fully prepared to employ as councillors men of experience regardless of their Yorkist associations. ‘Loyalty and ability were the only criteria of service – mighty lord, bishop, doctor of canon or civil law, or official, all were there, but only at the king’s will.’5

  With so substantial an overlap in personnel between the Yorkist and the first Tudor council, it would be a natural supposition to make that Henry VII’s model for his council, in so far as he had a model, was the Yorkist precedent.6 Enough is now known about both councils, even though there remain many gaps in our knowledge, to show that this supposition is correct. Until comparatively recently not enough information was available about either council, but it has always been difficult to perceive what Henry VII in the circumstances of his accession could have done, at least for some years, but follow Yorkist patterns.

  How large Henry VII’s council was at any given time cannot be ascertained, but the total number of councillors identified for the whole reign is 227; of these 183 are known to have attended one or more of 135 meetings of the council in one form or another spaced over twenty-one of the twenty-five years of the reign.1 Of the total number a rough division into classes has been made as follows: peers 43, courtiers 45, churchmen 61, lawyers 27, officials 49.2 This division cannot be taken as exact, since serious overlapping of classes is unavoidable, but it does give an indication of the diversity of the personnel of the council over the reign, and invalidates any idea that Henry VII drew his councillors mainly from any particular class. It is, for example, calculated that about two-thirds of the peerage were present at one or more meetings of the council over the reign,3 and it cannot be said therefore that Henry VII neglected the lay peers in composing his council, even though only a few of them appear to have been used frequently. The spiritual lords were likewise heavily drawn upon, as many as seventy-three, if those who were also officials are included; of these thirty were bishops, and most meetings were attended by several bishops, even though again only those who were also officials attended frequently and attained to importance as councillors.4

  Among the common lawyers, the chief justice and chief baron, and the law officers figure most prominently, but their activities were not confined to judicial business; any business might be dealt with at meetings at which some of them were present.5 Of the officials, the chancellor, treasurer, and keeper of the Privy Seal may be described as ex officio councillors, and were the most regular attenders, although it cannot be shown that any one of them was always present at a meeting. Probably the chancellor was normally present and presided unless the king were present, which he frequently was,6 or until the time came (probably in 1495) when the preoccupations of the chancellor induced the appointment of a president of the council for at least some occasions.7 Specific references to ‘the president of the council’ occur from March 1497, and by October to such a president by name. The probability is that the appointment for such an officer arose from the need to have someone to preside over meetings of the council when the chancellor was not available, and since Morton was by then approaching eighty years of age and was to die on 15 September 1500, the need must have become apparent. During the ensuing years – and no chancellor was to be appointed until 21 January 1504 – further appointments of presidents were made, but references to the presidents remain singularly few, and only slight inferences can be drawn therefrom. Certainly it seems clear that the presidents among other activities acted judicially in Star Chamber and were especially associated with, and even regarded as the presiding officer at jurisdiction over ‘requests’. Several other officials frequently attended, but not so much because of their offices as because of their personal standing with the king.1

  There is no evidence that anything like a meeting of all the council ever took place or that such an unlikely event was ever envisaged. The limited evidence we have suggests that at most perhaps two dozen councillors were summoned to and attended habitually and composed what was normally regarded as a meeting of the council.2 It is a misnomer to call these an ‘inner council’; it was the council in so far as the council was manifested in general meetings. Most of the councillors attending these meetings were there frequently because they were regarded by the king as his most confidential and reliable councillors, but it was the king’s will in the prevailing circumstances of the moment that decided just which councillors should be summoned to attend. Any councillor could be required to take the councillor’s oath, but it is unlikely that all the persons designated councillors were expected to do so.3 Designation as a king’s councillor undoubtedly gave a man a status that was honorific in itself and also served to associate him with the regime. A wide range of actual or potential services could be readily brought within the compass of the king’s call by such designation. Persons whose services in diplomatic missions were desired; lawyers whose special talents were wanted for some particular tasks; magnates whose support for the government it was desirable to recognize; other persons for other purposes; all could be brought within the ranks of the councillors. But only a few could be entrusted with the secrets and tasks of government at its highest level; only those to whom by reason of office or trust the king was prepared to open his mind, upon whom he relied for advice and the formulation of policy and decision in any matter of state that might arise. It is upon these men and the nature of their business that attention needs to be focused if Henry VII’s government at its apex is to be depicted. Although the surviving evidence of conciliar activity remains comparatively scanty, both as regards advisory and judicial functions, enough is now available to provide a general picture. Contrary to formerly common belief, it is certain that a register of council business was kept both for executive and judicial business, at this time. All the volumes for Henry VII’s reign remained in the custody of the later clerk of the Star Chamber, until the eighteenth century, when they disappeared. We are consequently dependent for our knowledge of their contents upon a number of extracts made from them in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1

  The outstanding feature as regards the three principal offices, the chancellorship, treasurership, and the keepership of the Privy Seal, was the long tenure of office enjoyed by those whom Henry VII appointed. Only four chancellors were appointed throughout the reign; two of these held the office for nearly twenty years between them, whilst two keepers of the Great Seal held posts for p
eriods of under two years each. Two treasurers held office, between them, for very nearly the whole reign, and only two keepers of the Privy Seal were appointed throughout the reign. It is clear that Henry VII knew how to select his chief administrative officers and principal councillors, retained his confidence in them, and continued to rely upon them in most cases for the duration of their or his life.

  The first two chancellors appointed were both men who had had experience of the office under the Yorkists and were clearly stop-gap appointments, no doubt pending the return to England of John Morton. Thomas Rotherham (1423–1500), archbishop of York since 1480, had had extensive administrative and legal experience under Edward IV, and had been chancellor from 1474 (with a short interval in 1475) when he attained a reputation as an ‘equity’ judge until he was dismissed by Richard, duke of Gloucester, then protector, in April 1483. Henry VII made use of him as an interim chancellor from 18 September to 7 October 1485.1 The second stop-gap was the man who had been chancellor in England whilst Rotherham accompanied Edward IV to France in 1475, John Alcock (1430–1500), bishop of Worcester since 1476, who had once been tutor to Edward V, was destined to succeed to the bishopric of Ely when Morton became archbishop, and who retained the chancellorship until 6 March 1486.2 From that date John Morton, bishop of Ely since 1479, held the office until his death on 15 September 1500.

  Although there can be little doubt that Morton was the key figure in Henry VII’s government for many years, nothing approaching an adequate study of his life and role has yet been published, and here we can only sketch his career and recall estimates of his qualities that have been made at different times.3 That he was an astute politician and a sagacious lawyer and administrator cannot be doubted. It was not only his longevity that enabled him to serve in turn Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor kings. He was well able to trim his sails according to prevailing winds, but it could only have been great abilities that enabled him to anticipate Thomas Wolsey by becoming at the same time chancellor, archbishop, and cardinal. A doctor of laws of Oxford, he began his career as a practising lawyer in the court of Arches, managed to attract the patronage of Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury from 1454, and soon himself became an outstanding pluralist. He did not, however, climb very high on the ladder of officialdom under Henry VI, but became chancellor of the duchy of Cornwall and a master in Chancery, and he was sufficiently attached to the Lancastrians to throw in his lot with them when disasters overtook them, was present and captured at the battle of Towton, escaped and eventually joined Queen Margaret in exile at St Mihiel. He acted as keeper of the Privy Seal to Henry VI and he was concerned in the negotiations that led to the Readeption of Henry VI in 1470. After Tewkesbury, he made his peace with Edward IV, and then in time had a chance to use his talents in the service of the new regime. His attainder was reversed; he became master of the Rolls and a king’s councillor in 1473, was employed on several diplomatic missions, and assisted in the negotiations leading to Edward IV’s Treaty of Picquigny with Louis XI in 1475; by then he was deemed to be of sufficient importance and influence to be made the recipient of a pension of six hundred crowns from Louis XI. In 1479 he became bishop of Ely. His hopes of further service and promotion, however, appeared to be terminated by Richard III’s usurpation. For whatever precise reason, Richard ordered his arrest along with Stanley and Hastings and others, in June 1483. As we have seen, Morton came into the custody of the duke of Buckingham at Brecon, and there took a major share in the concoction of the conspiracy to overthrow Richard III and to promote the cause of Henry of Richmond.1 The total failure of Buckingham’s rebellion did not prevent Morton from fleeing to Ely, thence to Flanders, and thence to Rome.2 He was back in England, apparently, by mid-October 1485. On 6 March 1486 he became chancellor of England, and archbishop of Canterbury on 6 December of that year.3 His cardinalate came in 1493.