Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/443

 HISTORY OF KING HERY VII. BMsi4; as having an expectation and a kind of di vination, that the king, by reason of his many disorders, should not be of long life, but was like to leave his sons of tender years; and then he knew well how easy a step it was, from the place of a protector, and first prince of the blood, to the crown. And that out of this deep root of ambition it sprang, that as well at the treaty of peace that passed between Edward the Fourth and Lewis the Eleventh of France, concluded by interview of both kings at Piqueny, as upon all other occasions, Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side of honour, raising his own reputa tion to the disadvantage of the king his brother, and drawing the eyes of all, especially of the no bles and soldiers, upon himself; as if the king, by his voluptuous life and mean marriage, were be come effeminate and less sensible of honour and reason of state than was fit for a king. And as for the politic and wholesome laws which were enacted in his time, they were interpreted to be but the brocage of an usurper, thereby to woo and win the hearts of the people, as being conscious to himself, that the true obligations of sovereign ty in him failed, and were wanting. But King Henry, in the very entrance of his reign, and the instant of time when the kingdom was cast into his arms, met with a point of great difficulty, and knotty to solve, able to trouble and confound the wisest king in the newness of his estate; and so much the more, because it could not endure a de liberation, but must be at once deliberated and de termined. There were fallen to his lot, and con current in his person, three several titles to the imperial crown. The first, the title of the Lady Elizabeth, with whom, by precedent pact with the party that brought him in, he was to marry. The second, the ancient and long disputed title, both by plea and arms, of the house of Lancaster, to which he was inheritor in his own person. The third, the title of the sword or conquest, for that he came in by victory of battle, and that the king in possession was slain in the field. The first of these was fairest, and most like to give content ment to the people, who by two and twenty years reign of King Edward the Fourth had been fully made capable of the clearness of the title of the white rose, or house of York ; and by the mild and plausible reign of the same king towards his latter time, were become affectionate to that line. But then it lay plain before his eyes, that if he relied upon that title, he could be but a king at courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power : the right remaining in his queen, upon whose de cease, either with issue, or without issue, he was to give, place and be removed. And though he should obtain by parliament to be continued, yet he knew there was a very great difference between a king that holdeth his crown by a civil act of estates, and one that holdeth it originally by the law of nature and descent of blood. Neither wanted there even at tlr.it timo secret rumours and whisperings, which afterwards gathered strength and turned to great troubles, that the two young sons of King Edward the Fourth, or one of them, which wore said to be destroyed in theTower, were not indeed murdered, but conveyed secretly away, and were yet living : which, if it had been true, had prevented the title of the Lady Elizabeth. On the other side, if lie stood upon his own title of the House of Lancas ter, inherent in his person, he knew it was a title condemned by parliament, and generally pre judged in the common opinion of the realm, and that it tended directly to the disinherison of the line of York, held then the indubitate heirs of the crown. So that if he should have no issue by the Lady Elizabeth, which should be descendants of the double line, then the ancient flames of dis cord and intestine wars, upon the competition of both houses, would again return and revive. As for conquest, notwithstanding Sir William Stanley, after some acclamations of the soldiers in the field, had put a crown of ornament, which Richard wore in the battle, and was found amongst the spoils, upon King Henry s head, as if there were his chief title ; yet he remembered well upon what conditions and agreements he was brought in ; and that to claim as conqueror was to put as well his own party, as the rest, into ter ror and fear ; as that which gave him power of disannulling of laws, and disposing of men s fortunes and estates, and the like points of abso lute power, being in themselves so harsh and odious, as that William himself, commonly called the Conqueror, howsoever he used and exercised the power of a conqueror to reward his Normans yet he forbore to use that claim in the beginning, but mixed it with a titulary pretence, grounded upon the will and designation of Edward the Confessor. But the king, out of the greatness of his own mind, presently cast the die ; and the inconveniences appearing unto him in all parts, and knowing there could not be any interreign, or suspension of title, and preferring his affection to his own line and blood, and liking that title best which made him independent ; and being in his nature and constitution of mind not very ap prehensive or forecasting of future events afar off, but an entertainer of fortune by the day ; resolved to rest upon the title of Lancaster as the main, and to use the other two, that of marriage and that of battle, but as supporters, the one to appease secret discontents, and the other to beat down open murmur and dispute : not forgetting that the same title of Lancaster had formerly maintained a possession of three descents in the crown ; and might have proved a perpetuity, had it not endea in the weakness and inability of the last prince Whereupon the king presently that very daj T being the two and twentieth of August, assumed the style of king in his own name, without mot- tion of the Lady Elizabeth at all, or any relauou