Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/351

Rh IIEXKV VIII.] ENGLAND 331 By. at Westminster. But the architectural details are still for the moat part pure. It is in tombs and woodwork that the Renaissance details first creep in, and that hardly till the reign of Henry VIII. But, just at the end of this period and the beginning of the next, English domestic architecture reached its highest perfection. Houses had now quite out stripped the alternatives of the period immediately before, when the choice lay between the fortress and the simple roes- manor-house. In the latter part of the fifteenth century archi- and the beginning of the sixteenth, we come to palaces, as ture. distinguished from castles. Vast houses arose, where fortifi cation was quite secondary or in truth had come to be a mere survival, and where we see the true English style just before it became corrupted. From Haddon Hall the series goes on, till iu days which chronologically belong to our next period, we get such piles as Cowdray, Hampton Court, and the unfinished castle of Thornbury. These are build ings of the reign of Henry VIII. ; but the architectural periods cannot be made exactly to fit in with the more obvious divisions of our history. The buildings of Henry VIII. s reign must be classed with those of the fifteenth century, rather than with those of the latter half of the six teenth. The Renaissance did not affect architecture, as dis tinguished from furniture and decorations, till the time of Edward VI. n- While two of the three great discoveries were causing a rce. revolution in the worlds of warfare and literature, the third, the compass, was no less doing its work in its own region. Under Edward aud Richard the commerce of England advanced swiftly. From the north-western seas it was now spread over the whole Mediterranean. At no time did it make greater advances than under Edward IV., who was a considerable merchant in his own person. In Henry VII. s days the New AVorld was thrown open to the adventurers of the Old. As far as mere discovery went, England had, before the end of the fifteenth century, her full share in the work through the American discoveries of Sebastian Cabot. ery of But, as far as England was concerned, it was as yet mere erica, discovery. The time for English settlements beyond the ocea u, or even for English enterprise in those distant waters, had not yet come. The path towards them was shown, and that was all. We have seen that the civil wars really end, and that the time of unrestrained Tudor domination begins, in the middle of the reign of Henry VII. His later rule was the rule of a despot, who strove as far as might be to reign without a parliament. His desire to be independent of his people led to that rule of grasping avarice which has caused his rule to be chiefly remembered for the endless shifts by which his greed of money was satisfied. His reign is important chiefly as leading the way to the more brilliant time which followed, a time which can be understood only if we throw ourselves into the point of view from which men looked upon it at the time. The next king, Henry nry VIII. , began his reign in two characters which at once marked it off from any reign since that of Henry V., we might almost say from any reign since that of Edward III. time. After a long time during which the strength of England had been wasted in deciding in arms between rival pretenders to the crown, England had again a king whose title was undis puted, and who led Englishmen to conquest beyond the sea. That was the first aspect in which Henry VIII. appeared to England and to Europe. The real historical charac teristics of his reign are different. The special features of his reign are the working of a despotism of a very peculiar kind, and the application of that despotism to work a great ecclesiastical revolution. But, though this last is the special characteristic of the age and the reign of Henry, yet it did not become a characteristic of his rein till he had already been many years on the throne. The acts which chrono- his name first suggests to the popular mind, the suppression logy of of monasteries and the beheading of wives, do indeed effec- hi& ni s a - tually distinguish his reign from any other ; but they are features which belong to the latter years of his reign only. They no more make up the whole of Henry s reign than the Scottish wars make up the whole of the reign of Edward I. Duriag the greater part of Henry s reign the characteristic feature of the time seemed to be the unusually high place which England held in the general affairs of Europe. There was much in the general character of the age which European helped to give England this special European importance, position It was a transitional age; new ideas had come in, but the old ^ g ~ ideas had not been wholly forgotten. The powers of Europe were now beginning to put on some approach to the shape and the relations to one another which they kept down to very modern times. We have come to the beginning of the long rivalry between France and the house of Austria. France had, on different grounds, hereditary enmities both with the empire and with the houses erf Burgundy and Aragon. The pretensions of the French kings to the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan were the chief cause of the long struggles in Italy in which all the neigh bouring powers had their share. Henry stood apart, and was eagerly sought by. all as ally or as arbiter. Here is a wholly new state of things, the beginning of that wider system of European policy which deems that no European state is wholly without interest in the affairs of any other. We are on the road to the days of the doctrine of the balance of power. On the other hand, the old enmity between England and France had not died out, nor had the old grounds for that enmity been forgotten. The memories of the days of Edward III. and Henry V. are at this time strangely mingled up with political ideas which might be a century or two later. Henry is called in as the arbiter of Italy and of Europe. He is the defender of the pope and the enemy of the Turk. He dreams of the empire for himself, and of the papacy for his great minister. Negotiations and changes of side are endless. Wars ami Of the two successive kings of France, Lewis XII. aud alliances Francis L, he is alternately the friend and the enemy. ofHeniy. He has wars with both ; yet he becomes the brother-iu law of Lewis and the sworn brother of Francis. When the empire and the powers of Castile, Burgundy, and Aragon were all united in the person of Charles V., the old alliance between England and Burgundy, aud the far older alliance between England and the empire, united Charles and Henry for several years against Francis. Henry s very failure to obtain the imperial crown seems not so much to have embittered him against the successful candidate as to have turned his thoughts towards the crown which he professed to claim by hereditary right. From 1519 to 1525, Henry and his imperial nephew seemed steady friends. From about this time till quite the end of Henry s reign, foreign affairs are almost sunk in the sur passing interest of events at home. But, as those events depended on the divorce of the emperor s aunt, the friendship of England at this stage leaned to Francis against Charles. But, amidst all these sh if tings of friendship and enmity, the only real warfare in which England either did or suffered anything was waged with the two old enemies, France aud her firm ally Scotland. The two periods of really active warfare under Henry come at the two ends c f his reign. From 1512 to 1514 was a time of war, a time of victory on the part of England. The one year 1513 saw the defeat of the invading Scots at Flodden, and the conquest of Terouanne and Tournay by the king of England in person, with the emperor-elect as his ally, almost as his mercenary. All this within the space of a few weeks seemed to bring back the most triumphant days of Edward