Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/381

 years of Ferdinand, and the proved impracticability of Maximilian, seemed to be opening out a career for a new leader in Europe; and many eyes were turned on Henry. He was willing enough, to marry, perhaps the queen dowager of Naples; perhaps the archduchess Margaret; the latter marriage would have given him a direct hold on the Netherlands and a possible claim on the regency of Castile, especially if the young Charles should become his son-in-law. With two such competitors, however, as Ferdinand and Maximilian the diplomatic game was slow and cautious. And in the midst of it Henry died, on April 31st, 1509.

I cannot now presume to enter upon two remaining aspects of the reign, the social and the religious, although both of them furnish us with details not less important, and scarcely more entertaining than those which we have now gone through. As for the social history, I can only say that it must be read chiefly in the Statutes concerning trade, labour, and agriculture, and the slightly increasing store of such letters as we have in the Paston and Plumpton collections: the letters of Erasmus and the scholars of the time, More's Utopia, and a very few other sorts of materials, add a little to the light that is beginning to shine towards the close of the reign. Ecclesiastically Archbishop Morton's design of visiting and reforming the monasteries was a partial anticipation of the much greater scheme of Cardinal Wolsey. There is little or no religious persecution; there is little or no literary or ecclesiastical activity, although there are, now and then, small flashes of anticipation of what is coming: the reign of Henry VIII would not in any respect have been what it was, if he had not had a predecessor like Henry VII; but, such as it was, it gathers up and concentrates in itself all the interest that would properly belong to that of his father.

I have said enough about the political importance of the reign, and perhaps in the last lecture more than enough about personal incidents and characteristics. To the last, however, Henry VII remains somewhat of an enigma to us. Was he a great king? If it be enough to constitute a great king, to have reigned twenty-four years without a single important