Henry VII Read online

  So far as the evidence that we possess shows, it turned, without change of personnel or place of sitting, from dealing with foreign relations or internal administration to hear a charge of riot or decide a disputed title to land. Foreign affairs, the government of Ireland, trade and commerce, piracy, coinage, the maintenance of internal order, the government of London, city guilds, criminal trials and civil litigation, all these subjects engaged its attention at one time and another.1

  It is not indeed possible to catalogue or specify all the subjects of conciliar concern. It is evident that any topic that might concern the king’s government might engage the council’s attention. Proclamations remained a royal prerogative, and most of Henry VII’s were issued without mentioning the council, but nonetheless the council’s agreement to some of them was obtained beforehand.

  The council existed to advise the king on all or any matters as he thought fit. He himself was often but not always present, especially if the business was of a routine judicial character. Deliberation might be formal or informal, meetings large or small. That he personally intervened in deliberations, even sometimes injudicial matters, and specifically sought councillors’ opinions, particularly in matters of foreign policy, is clear. It is equally clear that it was advice that he sought, and that the ultimate decision in matters about which he wished to decide for himself remained with him. There is no hint that the council or any of the councillors would, or could overbear him. ‘Henry was master in his own house.’1

  1 G. R. Elton, ‘Why the history of the early Tudor council remains unwritten’, Annali della Fondazione italiana per la storia amministrativa, I (1964), 268–96.

  2 The indispensable commentary and texts are contained in Select cases in the council of Henry VII, ed. C. G. Bayne and W. H. Dunham, S.S. 75 (1958). This valuable volume, however, was largely preoccupied with the judicial activities of the council, and the criticisms of it by G. R. Elton, E.H.R., LXXIV (1959), 686–90, need to be taken into account. Important contributions were made, mostly in relation to a later period, by W. H. Dunham, ‘The Ellesmere extracts from the “Acta Consilii” of King Henry VIII’, E.H.R., LVIII (1943), 301–18; and ‘Members of Henry VIII’s whole council 1509–1527’, ibid. LIX (1944), 187–210. Professor Elton, Annali, loc. cit. 272, has shown that the expression ‘whole council’ merely meant all the councillors. For other materials on the judicial activities of the council, see below, p. 147 ff., fn. The articles by A. F. Pollard, ‘Council, Star Chamber and Privy Council under the Tudors’, E.H.R., XXXVII (1922), 337–60, 516–39, although superseded in some respects and erroneous in others, contain a number of points that are still valid. The older books and articles relevant to the subject are now mostly superseded. Useful material is contained in I. S. Leadam (ed.), Select cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber, I, 1477–1509, S.S. XVI (1963), but the editorial comment is almost entirely out of date.

  3 ‘Henry’s board was the council, and his generation never called it by any other name’ … ‘we do not possess the means of dividing the members of this council into separate bodies according to the nature of their duties.’ (Bayne, op. cit. xxii, xli.) Unfortunately Bayne was not wholly consistent in observing these undoubtedly correct statements. He thought, for example, that the Statute of Retainers (or Liveries) of 1504 (19 Henry VII, c. 14) allows us to regard the ‘council in attendance as a recognized body’ (ibid, xxiv), but the reference in the statute is simply to ‘the King and his Council attending upon his most royal person wheresoever he be’ (S.R. II, 658; extract in J. R. Tanner, Tudor constitutional documents (1930), 10). This can only mean to refer to those councillors who happened to perambulate with the king and does not identify a ‘body’ in any institutional sense. Kings had always had councillors ‘in attendance’. G. R. Elton, Annali, loc. cit. 290.

  1 See the memorandum printed in L. & P., I, 56–9, and in Chrimes and Brown, Select documents, 357–8; discussed in R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North (1926). See also R. L. Storey, Henry VII, 147–9: and ‘The wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland 1377–1489’, E.H.R., LXXII (1957), 593–615; R. R. Reid, op. cit.; F. W. Brooks, The Council of the North (Hist. Association, 1953, rev. ed. 1966); G. R. Elton, The Tudor constitution, 196–7.

  2 See below, p. 245 ff.

  1 Bayne, op. cit. lxxv–lxxvi.

  2 Aptly cited by A. F. Pollard, loc. cit. 340. The original sentence in Fleta continues with the words ‘in parliamento suo’.

  3 R. Somerville, ‘Henry VII’s “Council Learned in the Law”’, E.H.R., LIV (1939), 427–42. Sir Robert Somerville clearly showed that the members of the Council Learned exercised their jurisdiction as members of the King’s Council, and that the records refer indifferently to proceedings before the Council Learned and the King’s Council (op. cit. 439). There is, therefore, no validity in describing the Council Learned as ‘a committee of the council’ (ibid.), any more than there is in similarly describing the council in Star Chamber as a committee of the council. Both are merely groups of councillors for some purposes. They do not derive their functions by delegation from the council: they are the council for their occasions. The references to the dispute between the Corporation of York and the abbey of St Mary contained in York Civic Records, II (1941), ed. Angelo Raine (Yorks. Arch. Soc, Record Ser., CIII, 169), cited by Bayne, op. cit. xxvii, as evidence that the matter was heard and examined by the King’s Learned Council, and then ‘referred back to the council proper for final decision’ do not appear to support Bayne’s interpretation, if it was meant to imply that the Council Learned referred back to the council as a whole in the sense that a modern committee refers back to its appointing body. There are no such words as ‘referring back’ in the record, or any suggestion that the King’s Learned Council was thought of as a committee of the council. In any event the decision of the King’s Council was that the matter should either abide the rule of the bishop of Winchester, two of the King’s Council and two judges, or else be dealt with under the common law (ibid. 172).

  1 The fullest discussion is in Bayne and Dunham, op. cit. xlix–lxiv. For a brief summary and references, see G. R. Elton, The Tudor constitution (1960). It is unfortunate that Professor Elton, although well aware that the controversy is dead, should have perpetuated the old untenable label by printing the words ‘Star Chamber* both in his list of statutes and in his imaginary title to the act, op. cit. xi and 163. For a facsimile of the act, see B.I.H.R., III (1925–6), 114.

  2 See below, p. 154 ff.

  3 See below, p. 147 ff.

  1 See above, p. 56.

  2 P.V. (ed. Hay), 5–6.

  3 Bayne, op. cit. xviii.

  4 J. R. Lander, ‘Council, administration, and councillors, 1461–85’, B.I.H.R., XXXII (1959), 138–80. The names of the overlapping councillors are listed, 179–80.

  5 ibid. 165.

  6 J. R. Lander, ‘The Yorkist council and administration, 1461–85’, E.H.R., LXXII (1958), 27–46. The wide scope of the administrative activities of the Yorkist council is amply illustrated in both of Professor Lander’s valuable articles.

  1 Bayne, op. cit. xix–xxii.

  2 ibid. xxix.

  3 ibid.

  4 ibid. xxxi.

  5 ibid, xxxii.

  6 ibid, xxxiii.

  7 ibid, xxxvii–xl. Three presidents can be identified for the reign: 1497–1502 Thomas Savage, bishop of Rochester 1493–6, of London 1496–1501, archbishop of York 1501–7; 1502–6 Richard Fitzjames, bishop of Rochester 1497–1503, of Chichester 1503–6, of London 1506–22; 1506–9 Edmund Dudley. The evidence cited by Bayne, op. cit. xxxix, from the Plumpton correspondence (Cam. Soc. 4, 114), is too slight to justify the suggestion that the president (who appears to be called Lord President only when he was also a bishop) controlled the Signet Office.

  1 Bayne, op. cit. xxxv–xxxvi.

  2 ibid.

  3 ibid. xlix.

  1 These are printed in Bayne, op. cit. 1–59; and the problem of sources di
scussed, ibid, xi–xviii; cf. Elton, loc. cit. 285–90.

  1 See D.N.B.

  2 ibid.

  3 See D.N.B. A. B. Emden, Biographical register of the University of Oxford (1958), has a full sketch, pp. 1318–20; the list of benefices to which Morton was appointed fills a whole column in this volume; More’s Richard III, ed. Sylvester, 211–12, etc.

  1 See above, p. 20.

  2 More’s assertion that Morton went to Rome (Richard III, ed. Sylvester, 91, 269) has hitherto been deemed to be the only evidence for the visit. That Morton did in fact visit Rome and signed on at the Fraternity of the Holy Spirit and St Mary on 31 January 1485 is proved by the evidence printed in Pietro Egidi, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia (Institutia Storia Italiana, 45 (1914), 309). His nephew Robert Morton, and Oliver King, the future secretary to Henry VII, and others were also there at much the same time, I am indebted to my former pupil, Mr M. Pronay, now of the University of Leeds, for this reference.

  3 See above.

  4 Usurpation of Richard III, ed. C. A. J. Armstrong, 102.

  5 Richard III, ed. Sylvester, 90.

  6 Utopia, ed. Reed, 12.

  7 Bayne, op. cit. xxxvi.

  1 See D.N.B.

  2 C.P.R., Henry VII, I, 118; Materials, I, 495. See W. C. Richardson, Tudor chamber administration, 1485–1547 (1952), 100, fn. 45.

  3 Materials, I, 226. Extracts from payments, etc., Michaelmas Term, 1485. ‘To Thomas, archbishop of York, treasurer of England, for his fee and diet, £133 6s 8d’, cited by R. L. Storey, The reign of Henry VII (1968), 223.

  4 See D.N.B.; G.E.C.; L. & P., I, 14, etc.

  1 See D.N.B.; G.E.C.; Richardson, op. cit. 134.

  2 See D.N.B.

  1 Emden, op. cit.; D.N.B.

  2 Milan Cal., I, 335; Bayne, op. cit. xl.

  3 Venetian Cal., I, 256; Bayne, ibid.

  4 Spanish Cal., I, 163; Bayne, ibid. For Thomas Savage, see above, p. 102, fn. 7.

  5 Spanish Cal. Supplement, 131; Bayne, ibid. xli. It is noticeable that according to Bacon’s version of the proclamation made by Warbeck in 1496 (the original of which he said was among the Cottonian MSS), Warbeck included Fox, Bray, Lovell, and Riseley, as well as Oliver King, and Empson, among the fifteen persons of whom he said Henry VII had ‘none in favour and trust about his person except these, and such other caitiffs and villains of low birth’ (Henry VII, ed. Lumby, 142). In Speed’s edition of the work, Guildford is also included in the list, with two more names (ibid. 281).

  1 See below, p. 139.

  2 W. C. Richardson, op. cit., App., 451–8, has the fullest account; cf. R. Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster; D.N.B.; Wedgwood, Hist. Parl.: Biographies.

  3 W. C. Richardson, op. cit. 67 ff.; J. S. Roskell, The Commons and their speakers, esp. 298–9, 358–9; Wedgwood, Hist. Parl.: Biographies.

  1 See D.N.B.; G.E.C.

  2 Annali, 60, 116–19.

  1 See D.N.B.; Wedgwood, Hist. Pari.: Biographies.

  2 A journai of the visit was kept by his anonymous chaplain, printed by Pynson and edited by Sir H. Ellis, (Cam. Soc., LI, 1857).

  3 See D.N.B.; Wedgwood, Hist. Parl.: Biographies.

  4 Bayne, op. cit. xliii–xlviii.

  1 Bayne, op. cit. xlii.

  1 Bayne, op. cit. xlv.

  Chapter 5

  THE SEALS AND SECRETARIATS

  The elaborate secretarial organizations that had come into existence over the preceding centuries underwent little change in the reign of Henry VII, so far as we know. The Great Seal in the custody of the chancellor, the Privy Seal in that of the keeper, and the Signet Seal in that of the king’s secretary, continued to be used at this time in much the same way, and for much the same purposes as they had been before. Certainly no marked change in secretarial routine is discernible. It was still normal for a petition to be approved by the sign manual and for this signed bill to constitute a warrant to the Signet office to draw up a warrant to the Privy Seal office, which repeated the process to authorize the Chancery to issue the grant under the Great Seal.1 No attempt appears to have been made under Henry VII to curtail this long-winded and repetitive process. Whether it did not occur to anyone to try to simplify the elaborate procedure, which had grown up for historical reasons that had become largely otiose with the lapse of time, or whether the jealousies and vested interests of the offices concerned were too strong and entrenched to enable any reforming efforts to be made at this time, it is hard to say. That the vested interests were tough, and the sacrosanctity of routine hard-bound, we can well assume; but there is no evidence that any one sought to overcome either at this time. Such developments as occurred in the secretarial arrangements were therefore slight, and the result of changing circumstances rather than of any deliberate plan. The secretarial activities of the Chancery remained formal, and although legally indispensable for many purposes had little or no independent status in general administration. The Privy Seal continued to occupy a central position, as the seal for conciliar business and as easily movable for administrative purposes either by the king directly or through the Signet. The secretary and Signet remained close to the king, but as yet showed little sign of the great magnification of the practical importance they were to develop at a later period.

  There is nothing to suggest that either Morton or Warham,1 however important they were in other spheres, made any special mark upon the purely secretarial side of Chancery’s work. Their importance as councillors has been touched upon, and their significance as judges in the court of Chancery must be considered later. For secretarial functions, the masters and clerks in Chancery proceeded in the time-honoured routine to deal with the work that required the Great Seal, moved by authority from elsewhere, the making of grants, the issuing of original writs and other sorts of writs, and serving the needs of judicial administration, and authenticating instruments of state. ‘There is no sign,’ we are told, ‘that the routine of Chancery and the Great Seal was in any way affected in these years.’2

  Only two keepers of the Privy Seal had to be found during the whole reign, Peter Courtenay and Fox. Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter from 1478, a doctor of canon law of Padua and later of Oxford, had acted as secretary to Henry VI during the Readeption, but this did not prevent Edward IV from using him in the same capacity in 1472–4. But he had thrown in his lot with the rebellion of 1484, been attainted by Richard III, fled to Brittany, and received his reward by being appointed keeper, 8 September 1485; he retained his office until 24 February 1487, when he was further promoted to the rich see of Winchester.3 His successor, one of the outstanding personages of the reign, was Richard Fox, whose services Henry had acquired whilst in France. Fox retained the keepership until 1516, and was promoted successively to be bishop of Bath and Wells (1492), of Durham (1494), and of Winchester (1501). He became one of the most influential of Henry VII’s officers and councillors, employed especially on major diplomatic missions. He was to be the chief negotiator in the Treaty of Étaples and the ‘Magnus Intercursus’, the marriages of Princess Margaret with James IV and of Prince Arthur with Catherine of Aragon, and the alliance with Archduke Charles in 1508. His retention of office and influence for the first seven years of Henry VIII’s reign testifies to his outstanding abilities and resource, and marks him out as one of the principal builders of the early Tudor regime. The fact that he could perform his distinguished services whilst remaining the whole time keeper of the Privy Seal made him the greatest minister to hold that office up to that date, and rounded off the long slow climb of the keeper to preeminent ministerial rank.1

  The promotion of Fox left a vacancy in the secretaryship and Signet office2 which Henry decided to fill by calling on the services of a former Yorkist official, Oliver King, who had been a clerk of the Signet in 1473, French secretary, 1476–80,3 and king’s secretary to Edward IV and Edward V, 1480–3. His close associations in these years did not commend themselves to Richard III, who replaced him. Henry VII, however, in 1487 thought well enough of him to appoint him in Fox�
�s place and retained him in office apparently until November 1495, notwithstanding that he became bishop of Exeter in 1492.4 On his translation to the see of Bath and Wells in 1495, however, he was replaced before July 1496 as secretary by Robert Sherborne,5 an Oxford graduate who had been Morton’s secretary, and was to be used as envoy at the papal court in 1496, 1502 and 1504, and to Scotland in 1503.

  Sherborne became dean of St Paul’s in 1499, but was replaced as king’s secretary, probably to be ambassador at Rome, before he became bishop of St David’s in 1505; he was translated to Chichester in 1508.6 He was succeeded as secretary by Thomas Ruthall, a doctor of canon laws of Oxford, and an ambassador to France, in March 1500,7 who was not only able to retain the office until 1516, when he succeeded Fox as keeper of the Privy Seal, but also to hold it with the bishopric of Durham from June 1509.1 The fact that Ruthall retained the secretaryship for some years after he had become a bishop is not so significant a fact as has been argued, for the precedent had apparently already been set by Oliver King. But it seems clear that RuthalPs appointment to the great see of Durham whilst continuing to be the king’s secretary to Henry VIII and Wolsey’s alter ego in foreign affairs did mark a stage in the growth of the importance of the office. But in the long run it was to prove a matter of more importance for the subsequent development of the secretaryship whether the holder was prominent in the king’s council than whether he was a bishop. From William Hatcliffe’s tenure of the office in the time of Edward IV, c. 1464, the secretary is generally found to be among the king’s councillors.2 Whilst still in the office of secretary, Fox3 and King4 were so to be found; so was Sherborne, and later as bishop he was a member of the Council Learned.5 Ruthall was a member and could be required by the council ‘to conceive a minute for a reasonable answer’ to the archduke’s letter regarding Calais,6 and by 1504 it was thought most expedient that ‘Mr Secretary’ should be associated with my lord Chancellor and my lord Privy Seal to deal with diplomatic business.7 By that time it would seem, the king’s secretary was well advanced on the path to ministerial rank.