Henry IV Faces Rebellion
When Henry IV took the throne he faced a great rebellion. Owen Glendower in Wales threw off English rule for a time (1401–1408), but the future king Henry V, then Prince of Wales, defeated him with sound military tactics. Glendower lived for eight years in fear of his life, hiding in Welsh castles and gorges, and died a few hours after the gallant Henry pardoned him.
At the same time Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, rose and stirred up a group of northern nobles against the king, who had not kept the promises he made to them when they helped depose Richard II. Henry "Hotspur," the earl's reckless and impudent son (whom Shakespeare has needlessly made an admirable character), hurried to Shrewsbury with an inadequate army and gave battle to the king (1403). In that battle Hotspur died in foolish bravado. Henry IV fought manfully at the head of his army, and his carefree, dissolute son, "Prince Hal," showed such courage that it led to the victory at Agincourt and the conquest of France.
These rebellions and other disturbances left Henry no time or inclination to govern. His expenses outran his income, he quarreled foolishly with Parliament, and his reign ended in financial confusion and physical afflictions, including a leprosy-like skin disease, rectal prolapse and venereal disease. As Holinshed says, "at the age of forty-six, with much pain and anxiety and little comfort, he spread his wings to God."
Henry V: The Wild Prince Who Reformed
According to tradition and Shakespeare's plays, Henry V led a carefree, dissolute youth, and once even plotted to take the reins of government from his father, whom illness had made weak and incompetent but who still clung to power. Contemporary chroniclers mention only his revels, but assure us that after taking the throne "he changed and became another man, one who strove to be noble, dignified and modest."
The companion of drinkers and merry girls now devoted himself to leading united Christendom against the advancing Turks and, before that, to conquering France. His second aim was achieved with amazing speed, and for a time an English king sat on the throne of France. German princes bowed to him, praised him and resolved to make him emperor. In campaigning, in providing food for his troops, in his love for his soldiers, and in his boldness and courage in battle, he equaled Caesar. But suddenly, though only thirty-five, he caught a fever and died at Bois de Vincennes (1422).
Henry VI: A Saint on the Throne
His death saved France from bondage but ruined England. His popularity had led taxpayers to pay their debts to keep the government from bankruptcy. But his son Henry VI was only nine months old when he became king, and a dismal succession of corrupt regents and incompetent generals emptied the treasury and left an irreparable debt.
The new ruler never acquired the dignity of a king. He was a delicate young man with extremely weak nerves who loved religion and books and trembled at the mention of war. The English mourned that a king had slipped from their hands and been replaced by a saint. In 1452, like Charles VI of France, Henry VI went mad. The next year his ministers signed the peace treaty that recorded England's defeat in the Hundred Years' War.
The Wars of the Roses Begin
Richard, Duke of York, governed as regent for two years. In 1454 Henry, who had briefly recovered some of his reason, dismissed him. The angry duke claimed the crown as a descendant of Edward III. He called the Lancastrian kings usurpers and, together with Salisbury, Warwick and other barons, lit the fire of the Wars of the Roses. The red rose was the badge of Lancaster, the white rose that of York.
This war lasted thirty-one years (1454–1485). It set the barons on each other in the tireless suicide of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and left England in poverty and ruin. Soldiers released by an ill-timed peace, unwilling to return to country life, plundered towns and villages and killed anyone in their way without fear.
The Duke of York was killed in the fighting (1460), but his son Edward, Earl of March, continued the war ruthlessly, putting all prisoners of every class and family to death. Meanwhile Margaret of Anjou, Henry's brave and manlike queen, led the fierce and reckless Lancastrian army. March won at Towton (1461), overthrew the House of Lancaster, and took the throne as Edward IV, the first king of the House of York.
Warwick the Kingmaker
In fact, the man who ruled England for the next six years was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. He was head of a rich and populous family and had a commanding yet attractive personality. He was as careful and shrewd in statecraft and politics as he was brave in war. This "Warwick the Kingmaker" had won the battle of Towton and put Edward on the throne.
When the war was over the king devoted himself to women, while Warwick managed affairs so well that all the provinces south of the Tyne and east of the Severn (since Margaret was still fighting) obeyed him and gave him everything but the name of king. When Edward ignored reality and turned against him, Warwick joined Margaret, drove Edward out of England and restored Henry VI to the throne in name (1470), taking the reins of government again.
But Edward, with the help of Burgundian troops, raised a large army. He crossed the Humber, defeated and killed Warwick at Barnet, crushed Margaret's army at Tewkesbury (1471), and ordered Henry VI killed in the Tower. After that he reigned with an easy mind.
Edward IV
Edward was now only thirty-one. Commynes calls him "one of the handsomest men of his age" and says "he cared for nothing so much as women, dancing, amusement and hunting." He refilled his treasury by seizing the Neville estates, accepting a bribe of 125,000 crowns in cash, and exacting a promised 50,000 crowns a year from Louis XI as the price of peace. Once he felt secure financially, he ignored Parliament, whose only use to him was voting the government's money bills. Safe and comfortable, he gave himself up to indulgence and pleasure. Overeating made him fat, and excess in love wore him out. In 1483, at forty-one, at the peak of royal power and bodily bulk, he died.
Richard III and the Princes in the Tower
Edward left two sons: Edward V, who was twelve, and Richard, Duke of York, who was nine. Their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had been prime minister for the past six years and had governed with such effort, diligence, probity and skill that when he proclaimed himself regent, no one opposed him despite his "ill-shaped" hunched body, gloomy face and crooked shoulder. Whether intoxicated with power or rightly suspicious of plots to remove him, Richard imprisoned several nobles and executed one.
On July 6, 1483, he had himself declared king as Richard III. Soon afterward the two young princes in the Tower of London were murdered. The identity of the murderer is unknown. The nobles rose again, and this time their leader met Richard at Bosworth (1485). Most of Richard's soldiers refused to fight, and Richard, who lost both his crown and his horse, died in a desperate fight. With his death the House of York ended, and the Earl of Richmond took the throne as Henry VII and began the Tudor dynasty, which would end with Elizabeth.
Henry VII: A Miser Who Mended England
Under the whip of necessity, Henry developed the qualities and virtues his position required. In his fresco on the wall of Whitehall, Holbein shows him tall, slender, beardless, thoughtful and compassionate. But the portrait hardly shows his cunning, secret calculation, cold temper, pride, and long-lasting yet flexible stubbornness, which carried England from the poverty and disunion of Henry VI's time to the wealth and central power of Henry VIII's.
Bacon says Henry "loved money," because he understood its eloquence and its power to persuade in politics. He taxed the people with great skill, took money from nobles as "benevolences" or got gifts and offerings from them by force, and, to fill the treasury and reduce crime, greedily fined offenders heavily. He was the first English king since 1216 to balance income and expenditure, and his generosity and charities softened the severity of his thrift. Knowingly, he devoted himself to the business of governing and, to make his labor fruitful, strictly limited his own pleasures.
Constant suspicion, not without cause, darkened his life. He trusted no one, hid his purposes, and achieved his ends by any means, sure or doubtful. He established the Court of Star Chamber to try, in secret sessions, headstrong nobles too powerful to fear judges or local courts. Year by year he held a crushed and broken aristocracy and a frightened clergy more firmly in obedience to the crown. The powerful complained bitterly of the lack of liberty and the idleness of Parliament. But farmers and peasants forgave the king's severity, since he had made their lords feel the spur of discipline, and merchants and manufacturers were grateful for his wise efforts to advance industry and trade.
When he took the throne, England was in the anarchy of rival lords, with a weak and disgraced government that people neither obeyed nor were loyal to. When he died, he left Henry VIII a respected, orderly, united and calm country with a balanced economy.