Henry II
Born: 4 September 1454, Stafford
Married: Catherine Woodville (in March 1466)
Died: 2 November 1503, Salisbury
Titles: (claimed but unrecognised in brackets)
King of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland [and France]
Lord of the Scottish [and Greek] Isles
Duke of Buckingham, Holland and Friesland, Cornwall, [Iceland and Bretagne]
Earl of Stafford, Count of Guines
With Richmond gone there was nobody left to threaten Henry's claim to the throne. The de Cornouaille family had basically committed mass suicide in the bloody previous years, and all that was left were weak marital connections: the Neville family had joined the de Cornouailles in that fate, and Jasper Tudor was not the rallying figure his nephew had been. There would be only one threat to Henry's throne, and a weak one at that: the revolt of Lambert Simnel.
Simnel was not a member of royalty, nor even the nobility of his native Flanders. Instead, he was from the lower parts of the region's growing middle class, and had no real delusions of being anything more. In fact, he was only ten years old when, in 1487, a priest named Roger Simons brought him to the Earl of Kildare, one of the few loyal Irish lords. "Loyal" was a relative term, for while Gerald Fitzgerald professed homage to the English crown he was a devoted Cornwallist. Simnel provided an opportunity to claim a pretender to the English throne.
Unfortunately, he made one massive error. Simons said that he should be presented as Richard, younger of the "Princes in the Tower". It was a sensible option, as there was enough doubt as to the Princes' fate for people to believe that he was alive. Kildare had heard a rumor, however, that another claimant--Edward of Warwick, son of Clarence--had also died in the Tower, under Henry's custody. Simnel was two years closer to Warwick in age (he was four years younger than Richard), and so the claim was made.
Ireland was a horrible place to lead a revolt from, however, and the northern parts of England were disloyal enough (with no concern as to who was actually on the throne, it should be noted) to provide a decent army to fight Henry with. In fact, the city of York had only seen fit to allow Henry in on 29 May 1485 and no earlier, as a protest to the death of Richmond. Into this stew appeared Simnel and his guardians two years later, and by June they had gathered 19,000 men, including the Earl of Lincoln.
King Henry was astounded. He thought he had accounted for all the potential threats; they were either dead or in his custody. But when he heard that the young boy was claiming to be Warwick, he immediately calmed down. Warwick was not, in fact, dead, but quite alive, and it was with that child that Henry marched northward at the head of the English army.
Henry entered York with the child on 13 August 1487, amazing the people of the region. The news quickly reached the haphazard rebel army encamped near the famous Sherwood Forest, and within days half of the force disappeared. It did not help that Simnel himself did not inspire much confidence; Simons had not bothered to coach the boy in proper English, and so he spoke in his native Dutch. He could still be understood, but gave himself away as a middle-class Fleming and not the nephew of an English king. The rest moved on to the village of East Stoke, where, on 26 August 1487, Henry attacked.
The battle was quick. The Cornwallists at first held the high ground, but realizing that their army's morale was dropping rapidly, Kildare and Lincoln ordered a charge. Within an hour it was over: Lincoln was dead, with Kildare, Simons, and Simnel captured. Kildare would be executed; Simons was saved by his ecclesiastical position (although he would be imprisoned for life) and Simnel was given no blame, being merely a puppet. He would be placed in the royal household and serve Henry II and his heirs for years to come.
But the beginning of Henry's reign was not entirely devoted to fighting rebellion. He also intended to continue the reforms of the English governmental system that had begun during the reign of Edward IV. This increased the power of the middle class, but Henry's next weapon against the nobility was all his own: the Star Chamber and the justices of the peace.
The two were the main instruments in Henry's campaign against the system of "livery and maintenance". Livery allowed servants of nobles to wear their master's symbols, which not only gave them considerable power but extended the noble's authority as well. Maintenance was the most problematic of the results of the livery system: the private bands, who acted similar to the later Sicilian Mafia, would interfere with the legal system to ensure that their master could get away with anything.
The Star Chamber was a secret court set up to try some of the worst crimes: treason, sedition, libel, and so on. What pushed it from being simply another secret court into becoming so effective (and such a violation of the concepts of jurisprudence) was that it could try and convict people even if they technically did not break the law, but instead performed actions that the court believed should be illegal. It did its job, but at a severe price, as would be seen later on.
A 19th-century drawing of the Star Chamber Court
Less problematic was the network of justices of the peace. The system of justices, pulled from the local gentry (they were required to have an annual income of £20, well past the lower classes of the time), had existed for quite some time, beginning more as policemen (empowered to arrest but not try criminals) but slowly gaining more power over the centuries. Slowly, they gained more powers, until under Henry II's reign they became the main system of authority in England and Scotland. They were to enforce Acts of Parliament, replace jurors seen as corrupt, and ensure that proper weights and measures were used. Certain low-level crimes could even be tried and sentenced by the justices alone.
What must be re-emphasized in that previous paragraph is that this took effect in both England
and Scotland. Henry sought to break the power of the Scottish Parliament, who had merely stood by as problems occured to the south and kept quiet. Henry was a thorough man, however, and had no intention of leaving them alone. The Scottish Parliament was all but forced to, on 2 March 1490, pass a law giving Henry the same considerable control he wielded in England. They also subsequently went through some measures to fix the wide disparity in laws between the two kingdoms.
The domestic policies of Henry II's reign
By this point, Henry was well in control of the kingdom. A threatened rebellion by nobles in 1489 against the new legal system sputtered out, not even really getting started. He had quieted the Cornwallists through marriage: Elisabeth, eldest daughter of King Edward IV, was to marry his son Edward. However much Henry despised Elisabeth Woodville and her children, through her came an even stronger claim to the English throne, one which Edward intelligently decided not to use during his father's lifetime.
Now able to turn outward, he saw a Europe in equal turmoil. The death of Charles the Bold, Count of Burgundy, had caused the Babenburg family to gain a long stretch of land from the border of France to the border of Hungary, including in the middle the rich regions of Helvetia (modern Switzerland) and the Italian city of Milan. They were now in conflict with the King of Italy; when the Milanese revolted in 1485, the Austrians crushed it, only to soon find themselves thrown back by the Italians.
Henry had no intention of doing anything with the more tumultuous parts of European politics. Minor marriage alliances were contracted with the Holy Roman Emperor (the von Ardennen dynasty of Lower Lorraine), the King of France, and even the far-away King of Egypt. England's focus on trade also required foreign dealings; the most important was a not-so-foreign one, an argument with the Count of Geldre over harassment in Antwerp. This was resolved, and the other main dealing eventually proved positive.
This was with the Italian city of Genoa. Although part of the Kingdom of Italy, the main trading cities of the region were given some autonomy. One Genoese merchant, sent on a semi-diplomatic mission to London, became enamoured with the city and offered his services to the King as an engineer. Henry did not have enough money nor inclination (nor the merchant enough talent) to give him such a post, but the merchant moved on to other things. His true ability was sailing, and when he arrived in Bristol in 1495 he found a ready audience with the merchants there for funding of his next venture.
On 7 January 1497, with royal backing and a further £20,000 from the Bristol merchants for the setting up of trading posts and permanent settlements, Giovanni Caboto sailed for Asia, across the same ocean Christopher Columbus had only five years before.
Statue of Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) in Newfoundland
