Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/380

 marriage itself was not concluded until 1501; and on Arthur's death early in 1502, the scheme for her marriage with Henry was set on foot; out of which so great results were to come. The design was not, however, carried into effect until the next reign; and the intervening years are full of correspondence on points connected with dowry and dispensation. The earlier years of the Spanish negotiations contain no incidents independent of the general action of Europe, in which Henry, like Ferdinand and Isabella, was content to play a waiting game.

I have left to the last the negotiations with Flanders, first under Maximilian, and after the year 1494 under his son Philip. These, so far as they concerned the dynastic quarrels, are so closely interwoven with the French and Breton relations, that I need not recur to them.

In 1496, was concluded the great commercial treaty called Intercursus magnus, which was intended to secure the freedom of trade intercourse between England and the Netherlands, as well as the exclusion of Perkin Warbeck. The peaceful relations were not broken even whilst Maximilian and Philip were lending questionable support and making promises to Edmund de la Pole. The network of the family alliance, by which Ferdinand and Maximilian were uniting the great inheritances, might have led to a wavering of the balance under a more energetic hand than that of Henry; but, even if it had been endangered, the danger would have been averted by the arrangement concluded by the archduke on his forced visit to England in 1506; this, besides some advantage gained in the way of commerce which led the Flemings to call it Intercurms malus, not only secured the surrender of Edmund de la Pole, but opened a series of fresh marriage schemes, which entertained the king during the short remainder of his life. The most important of these was the engagement of the lady Mary to the archduke Charles; but the king himself, who had lost his wife in 1503, was in the matrimonial market, and his adventures contribute the one semi-comic element to this severely business-like reign.

The death of the archduke Philip in 1506, the advanced