How far is it true to call the reign of Henery VII as the period of remedy and seed time?

Henery VII reign was a period of remedy and seed time. The remedies belonged to the past ills; these fall in their natural place at the end of the story of the war the Roses.

The sowing was to bear great fruits in the future. For the time being the results were hidden. We have noticed briefly what was like the seed.

1. Strong Monarchy:

First came the planting of the overpoweringly strong Tudor monarchy. The wars of the Roses bad left the barons exhausted, the commons utterly discredited and the realm filled with one great longing, namely, for peace. Peace could only be assured to the people by keeping good order.

It seemed order could only be kept determination of the nation to support the crown.

Henery VII was various and Henery VIII seemed fitful and blood thirsty; Mary was a catholic and a persecutor of protestant subjects yet all had on the whole the support of the people.

The Tudors are sometimes spoken of as depots. If this be understood to mean stern absolute rulers, on whom Parliament imposed very little check, the name is befitting. If we infer that they held their people crushed down in an unwilling servitude, the inference is wrong. The Tudors were absolute because England believed them, trusted them and was willing that they should be absolute.

Contributing Causes:

Various causes helped the Tudors to become absolute; they were mainly two:

(a) Hoarding of money:

Henery VII gathered a great hoard of money, then as now, an unfailing source of power, His ministers-Cardinal Marton Empson and Dudley-used all sorts of methods to fill his exchequer partly by demanding benevo­lences, more by imposing large fines on those who had trespassed on the rights of the crown. Henery VIII in turn had spent all that his father collected, but enriched himself in turn by plundering the monasteries and the church.

(b) Advent of Gunpowder:

Coming into common use of gunpowder also strengthened the crown. For more than a hundred years gunpowder had been known. But the earlier guns and canons were so clumsy that they did not at first supersed the bow and the old siege engines. When, however, artillery began to be efficient, the realm of the old baronial castle durindled away; and as a king alone possessed artillery, he had an advantage in war which no rebel could complete. The use of guns also led to the decline of the knights who became absolute.

2. The New Discoveries:

Henery VII’s reign saw the Genvese navigator. Columbus discovered the New World for Spain in 1942, and Vasco-da-gama went round the Cape of Good Hope and opened the route to east for Portugal in 1497.

In 1497′ some Bristol merchant’s fitted out English ship which under veteran leaders-John and Sebastian Cabot-first reached the mainland of America.

Now trade and commerce began to be diverted towards the Atlantic Ocean and from the narrow Mediterranean Sea. The change of true routes meant much to England while the meditsrranean had been the highway England had been fur off.

The new highway lay at the door. Henceforth the states with an Oceanic Seaboard rose, where as those on thalassic sea-board declined. England, France, Spain and the Low Countries dwindled, Henry’s reign saw only the showing of the seed; yet when the harvest cancelong years after, it was a great one for England.

3. The New learning:

So, too, with the new learning. Taking its second birth renaissance in Italy spread to other lands, bringing with it an enthusiasm for learning, especially for classical learning and a desire to search out what was true.

The new spirit of research criticism did not confine itself to classical texts; it attacked theological claims also. This papacy was felt to be undesirable if not dangerous; and thus the new learning and the theologian gradually parted company.

In Henery VII’s reign the severance of the ways had not been reached, Grocyn, and Linacre who taught Greek at Oxford and Colet, who lectured on the Greek testament were only in the rested in spreading learning. Again, the seed lay in the ground germinating.

4. Dynastic Marriages:

So also it was with the policy of dynastic marriages- Marriages that is to say, among royal houses, intended to bring great inheritances and unite realns. It may seem at first sight out of character that this policy should accompany the growth of national spirit, since it is absolutely at variance with ideas of national policy as we know them now.

15th and 16th Century Picture:

In the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries a monarch had not yet become merely an official. He was not yet the possession of the people. On the contrary, the people where his. He directed the policy of the country and his friendship would naturally express itself in marriage alliances. Marriages formed the easiest bond and could prove most profitable in acquiring new dominions. England was now, for the first time about to join in a round of dynastic marriages, the effects of which deeply influenced European his during a great part of the sixteenth century, indeed European history of the time all hangs on them.

Story of Marriages:

The story begins with the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabell of Castile, which formed the nucleus round which the nation of Spain gradually formed out of the mass of little kingdoms and provinces of the penisula. About the same time Maximilien of Austria and married Mary of Burgundy, thus winning for the House of Hapsburg all Charles the Bold’s Burgundian dominions, including the Low Countries.

The daughter add heiress of the Spanish sovereigns. Juana married Philip the Handsome of Austria, Maximilian’s only son. This brought the Hapsburg’s into Spain. The newborn son of Philip and Juna, Charles would be heir to vast dominion.

The prize that was offered to Henery VII was the ham Catherine of Aragon, sister of Juanr; and Henery accepted it his eldest son, Arthur, Arthur, however, died within a yea his marriage and the bride was offianed to the king’s second son, Henry, afterwards Henery VIII.

Blow to France:

Here then was the first great marriage stroke entuining the fortunes of England with those of Spain and Austria securing its aid against the ambition of France. In the future lay other unexpected great events destined to spring from it the English Reformation and the Mairian prosecution.

Not content with this, another blow was aimed at France by the politicians of the House of Hapsburg. France had been the enemy of England, therefore, the ally of Scotland. To detach the scots from the French and thereby leave France isolated Henery VII’s elder daughter was married to James IV of Scotland in 1502.

Having thus raised England to a position of great influence in Europe, Henery VII died and left the working out of his schemes to his son Henry VIII.