Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/124

110 the early age of thirty-seven, than Henry was on the look-out for another wife, for it was another opportunity of making a profit. His eyes glanced over the courts and courtly dames of Europe; and the lady who struck him as the most attractive in the world was the widow of the late King of Naples—for the deceased monarch had bequeathed her an immense property. Her ducats were charms that told on the gold-loving heart of Henry most ravishingly. He posted off three private gentlemen, well skilled in such delicate inquiries, to Naples, to learn from real sources whether all was safe as to this grand dowry. Poor Catherine was even made to play a part in this notable scheme of courtship, by furnishing the emissaries with a letter to her relative, the queen-dowager. The gentlemen reported in the most glowing terms the charms of the queen-dowager's person, the sweetness of her disposition, and the brilliant endowments of her mind; but they were obliged to add that, though the lady's fortune was in justice as large as fame reported it, the present king refused to carry out the will by which it was conferred. This one unlucky fact at once blotted out all the rest, and Henry, giving not another thought to the Dowager-Queen of Naples, turned his attention to the Dowager-Duchess of Savoy, who was also reported to be rich; and a circumstance which we shall speedily have to relate seemed to put this lady almost entirely in his power.

While Henry, however, was traversing Europe with his thoughts to add to his ever-growing hoards, he was equally diligent at home in prosecuting every art by which he could add another mark to his heap. He sought out and kept in his pay clever and unprincipled lawyers to search the old statute-books for laws grown obsolete, but which had never been formally repealed; and he had another set of spies in correspondence with them, who went to and fro throughout the whole kingdom to make out all such persons of property as had transgressed these slumbering laws. Gentlemen, on refusing to pay the demands made upon them on these grounds, were arrested and cast into prison, where, instead of being duly brought to trial, they were kept in a state of constant alarm by reports carried to them of the grievous punishments preparing for them. This was done to extort large sums from them by way of compromise. When this failed, the unhappy men were brought to trial—not in the regular courts of justice, but before courts of commissioners appointed by the king, where there were juries of equally venal and abandoned character ready to condemn them. Even the very show of juries was in a while abandoned. The king, having concluded treaties with the monarchs abroad, especially those of France, Spain, and Scotland, and having put down and destroyed all his enemies at home, carried matters as he pleased; and all his efforts were directed to the single end of sucking up fresh streams of gold to gratify—but not satisfy, for that was insatiable—his thirsty dropsy of avarice. He soon ceased to proceed against his victims by indictment, but arrested them by precept, and tried them within the closed door of his Star Chamber, or in the private houses of his arbitrary commissioners.

Such a state of things could never have been tolerated in any former reign; but the wars of the Roses had cut off all the chief nobility, and the House of Commons, terrified by the summary proceedings against offenders, had become utterly cowed, and trembled at the mere word of this imperious monarch. Never, therefore, was the English people at any time so completely prostrated beneath the talons of a royal vampire as at this period. The rich merchants of London found themselves accused of mal-practices in the discharge of their civic offices, and were subjected to the same process of squeezing in Henry's universal press. We have noticed the seizure of Capel, the Lord Mayor of London, and his long imprisonment to extract a fine, grounded on such a charge, of £2,700, and ultimately compounded for £1,600. Another lord mayor, Thomas Knesworth, and his two sheriffs were imprisoned on similar charges, and lay for a long time in prison, till they submitted to pay £1,400.Hawis, a mercer and alderman, was harassed by these harpies of the crown till, not being able to satisfy their demands, he died of a broken heart; and Sir Lawrence Alemore and his two sheriffs were fined £1,000, and did not escape from prison whilst Henry lived. Had the grasping Tudor had a corporation as rich as the present metropolitan one, what a gold mine the city would have been to him!

To drain the coffers of the landed aristocracy, Henry's agents brought up against them all the old obsolete feudal charges of wardships, aids, liveries, premier seizins, and scutages. Their estates had long been held under a different tenure, obtained from former monarchs. No matter: all those marked out for legal bleeding were brought into the private inquisition of the king's commissioners, and compelled to pay whatever was demanded, or to suffer worse inconveniences. Even his own friends were not exempted from the ever-watchful eyes and schemes of this money-making king. The law which he had enacted against the practice of "maintenance" was a prolific source of emolument. A striking example of this species of royal sharp-practice was given in the case of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. If there was one man who had done more than another for the house of Lancaster, it was Oxford. He had shared in all the losses and expatriation consequent on their defeat. He had been seized, and had suffered a long imprisonment from Richard III. in the castle of Hams. Thence, making his escape, he joined Henry VII. when himself an exile in Brittany and France. He had come over with him on his enterprise to seize the crown of England, had commanded the van of his army at Bosworth, and since against the rebels of Cornwall. This nobleman having entertained the king on one occasion for several days magnificently at his castle of Henningham, to do the utmost honour to him at his departure, summoned all his friends and retainers, arrayed in all their livery coats and cognisances, and ranged them in two rows leading from the reception rooms to the royal carriage. Henry's eye was instantly struck with this prodigious display of wealth and of men, and his mind as suddenly leapt to a felicitous conclusion. There was money to be made out of it.

"My lord," he said, stopping short, and addressing the earl, "I have heard much of your hospitality, but I see it is greater than the speech. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen which I see on both sides of me, are surely your menial servants." The earl smiled, and said, "If it