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 infirmities. He discharged the debts of all prisoners in London committed for sums under 40s., and expressed remorse for the extortions practised under his authority by the notorious Sir [q. v.] and [q. v.], but they nevertheless continued till his death. He died at Richmond on 21 April 1509. Out of a family of seven, one son and two daughters survived him.

Henry was called the Solomon of England, being accounted one of the wisest princes of his time, yet even of his diplomacy (of which we know more than of his private life) the records are very scanty at home. Our knowledge, however, has been largely increased of late years by researches in foreign archives, which confirm the general impression given of it in Bacon's history. Churchmen and lawyers were Henry's principal agents. The latter were the chief instruments of his extortions, which were the principal blot on his reign. He was a great patron of commerce, and under his encouragement the Cabots discovered Newfoundland. Literature also interested him, and he recommended Caxton to translate and print ‘The Fayts of Armes and Chivalry.’ Of his magnificence in building the chapel which bears his name at Westminster remains a witness. It was designed as a shrine for Henry VI.

Thirteen portraits and two miniatures of Henry were shown in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (see catalogue). They included two by Jan de Mabuse, lent by Captain J. Bagot and Earl Brownlow. A painting of his marriage by the same artist was lent by Mrs. Dent of Sudeley; this was formerly in the Strawberry Hill collection. There are portraits at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at Christ Church, Oxford. At Windsor there is a painting of Henry VII and his family with St. George and the Dragon (engraved in ‘Archæologia,’ xlix. 246), and also a miniature executed by Nicholas Hilliard in 1609. A cartoon of Henry VII and Henry VIII, made by Holbein in 1537 for his fresco painting in the privy chamber at Whitehall (destroyed in 1698), is in the possession of the Marquis of Hartington.



HENRY VIII (1491–1547), king of England, was the second son of Henry VII, by his queen, of York [q. v.] He was born at Greenwich on 28 June 1491. When little more than three years of age he was, 12 Sept. 1494, appointed lieutenant of Ireland, with Poynings as his deputy. On 31 Oct. following his father dubbed him knight of the Bath, and next day created him Duke of York. In 1495 he was admitted into the order of the Garter, and installed on 17 May. In 1501 a marriage was proposed between him and Eleanor, daughter of the Archduke Philip, but the project was soon dropped. After the death of his brother (1486–1502) [q. v.] he was created Prince of Wales on 18 Feb. 1503, and soon after contracted to his brother's widow, [q. v.] A dispensation was granted for the match by Julius II on 26 Dec. 1503, and was sent by Ferdinand of Spain to England in 1504. But on 27 June 1505, being then close upon the age of puberty, he protested that the contract made during his minority was against his mind, and that he would not ratify it (, Eccl. Hist., ed. 1852, ix. 66). This, however, was merely a device of his father to keep himself free from any engagement to Ferdinand until the latter should send to England Catherine's stipulated dowry, only part of which had been paid [see under ]. Owing to the dispute on this subject, Henry VII to the close of his reign would not allow his son to proceed to the completion of this marriage, and young Henry himself was not impatient for it. Rumours were even spread that his father intended to marry him to Margaret, sister of Francis, count d'Angoulême, afterwards Francis I, a match first suggested by Cardinal d'Amboise. In 1506 Philip, king of Castile, who was driven by storms to land in England on his way from the Netherlands to Spain, conferred upon young Henry the order of the Toison d'Or.

From his earliest boyhood he was carefully educated. Erasmus, who visited the royal household when he was nine (or more probably only eight) years old, was struck even then with a sort of royal precocity of intellect which he combined with a highly polished manner. Boy as he was, he wrote during dinner a note to the great scholar requesting to be favoured with some production of his pen, which Erasmus gave him three days after in the form of a Latin poem (Prefatory epistle to Botzheim, in Catalogo Erasmi Lucubrationum, Basle, 1523). Nor was he less devoted to bodily than to mental exercises. At seventeen he was daily to be seen tilting at the ring with friendly rivals. At twenty-nine, when he had been some years king, and was the handsomest prince in Europe, he could tire out eight or ten horses in the course of a day's hunting, mounting each succes-