Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/379

 The peace of Etaples is an epoch in more senses than one; it was the most definite peace that had been made between England and France since the reign of Edward I. It was the closing of the Brittany business which had been the door by which England entered the arena of the new polities; and it allowed Charles VIII to begin his Italian expedition, which usually is regarded as the starting-point of the new drama. Henry, moreover, made a great deal of money by it. It was to last during the lives of both kings, and practically did so. For, in 1498, after Charles' death it was renewed with Lewis XII, and notwithstanding jealousies, intrigues and counter intrigues, remained unbroken until the next reign.

Scotland, which had been and was still to be the facile tool of France, had a policy of her own during these years. James III, who recognised in Henry VII a friend and kinsman representing the Lancaster interest, which he had always supported, perished in 1488, and from that year to 1498 the relations of the two countries consisted of an uneasy succession of truces broken by inroads of the Scots into the north, which, during the period of the activity of Perkin Warbeck, threatened to develop into active warfare.

In 1491, we find Henry intriguing to get the young king James IV into his own hands, as Henry IV had James I: in 1493, a treaty for seven years was concluded but not kept: in 1495, the marriage of James with the king's daughter Margaret was proposed. In 1498, by the good offices of the Spanish ambassador, a treaty for seven years was concluded which was shortly turned into a peace for life, cemented by the marriage which really came off in 1503. Thus, about the same time, although by a different process, the king secured himself, so far as negotiations could secure him, in peace for life with his two national and ancestral foes. In 1502 was made a treaty of perpetual peace with both.

The direct negotiations between England and Spain, which, like those between Henry and Maximilian, arose on the Brittany business, beg^n, in 1489 and 1490, with the alliance for the defence of the duchy, and so early comprised a purpose of marriage between Arthur and Katharine of Aragon. The