Henry VIII. | Page 6

at
the battle of Hastings her right to native kings; and Norman were
succeeded by Angevin, Angevin by Welsh, Welsh by Scots, and Scots
by Hanoverian sovereigns. The Tudors were probably more at home on
the English throne than most of England's kings; and their humble and

British origin may have contributed to their unique capacity for (p. 008)
understanding the needs, and expressing the mind, of the English nation.
It was well for them that they established their throne in the hearts of
their people, for no dynasty grasped the sceptre with less of hereditary
right. Judged by that criterion, there were many claimants whose titles
must have been preferred to Henry's. There were the daughters of
Edward IV. and the children of George, Duke of Clarence; and their
existence may account for Henry's neglect to press his hereditary claim.
But there was a still better reason. Supposing the Lancastrian case to be
valid and the Beauforts to be the true Lancastrian heirs, even so the
rightful occupant of the throne was not Henry VII., but his mother,
Margaret Beaufort. England had never recognised a Salic law at home;
on occasion she had disputed its validity abroad. But Henry VII. was
not disposed to let his mother rule; she could not unite the Yorkist and
Lancastrian claims by marriage, and, in addition to other disabilities,
she had a second husband in Lord Stanley, who might demand the
crown matrimonial. So Henry VII.'s hereditary title was judiciously
veiled in vague obscurity. Parliament wisely admitted the accomplished
fact and recognised that the crown was vested in him, without rashly
venturing upon the why or the wherefore. He had in truth been raised to
the throne because men were weary of Richard. He was chosen to
vindicate no theory of hereditary or other abstract right, but to govern
with a firm hand, to establish peace within his gates and give prosperity
to his people. That was the true Tudor title, and, as a rule, they
remembered the fact; they were de facto kings, and they left the de jure
arguments to the Stuarts.
Peace, however, could not be obtained at once, nor the embers of (p.
009) thirty years' strife stamped out in a moment. For fifteen years open
revolt and whispered sedition troubled the rest of the realm and
threatened the stability of Henry's throne. Ireland remained a hot-bed of
Yorkist sympathies, and Ireland was zealously aided by Edward IV.'s
sister, Margaret of Burgundy; she pursued, like a vendetta, the family
quarrel with Henry VII., and earned the title of Henry's Juno by
harassing him as vindictively as the Queen of Heaven vexed the pious
Æneas. Other rulers, with no Yorkist bias, were slow to recognise the
parvenu king and quick to profit by his difficulties. Pretenders to their

rivals' thrones were useful pawns on the royal chess-board; and though
the princes of Europe had no reason to desire a Yorkist restoration, they
thought that a little judicious backing of Yorkist claimants would be
amply repaid by the restriction of Henry's energies to domestic affairs.
Seven months after the battle of Bosworth there was a rising in the
West under the Staffords, and in the North under Lovell; and Henry
himself was nearly captured while celebrating at York the feast of St.
George. A year later a youth of obscure origin, Lambert Simnel,[23]
claimed to be first the Duke of York and then the Earl of Warwick. The
former was son, and the latter was nephew, of Edward IV. Lambert was
crowned king at Dublin amid the acclamations of the Irish people. Not
a voice was raised in Henry's favour; Kildare, the practical ruler of
Ireland, earls and archbishops, bishops and barons, and great officers of
State, from Lord Chancellor downwards, swore fealty to the reputed
son of an Oxford tradesman. Ireland was only the volcano which gave
vent to the subterranean flood; (p. 010) treason in England and intrigue
abroad were working in secret concert with open rebellion across St.
George's Channel. The Queen Dowager was secluded in Bermondsey
Abbey and deprived of her jointure lands. John de la Pole, who, as
eldest son of Edward IV.'s sister, had been named his successor by
Richard III., fled to Burgundy; thence his aunt Margaret sent Martin
Schwartz and two thousand mercenaries to co-operate with the Irish
invasion. But, at East Stoke, De la Pole and Lovell, Martin Schwartz
and his merry men were slain; and the most serious of the revolts
against Henry ended in the consignment of Simnel to the royal scullery
and of his tutor to the Tower.
[Footnote 23: See the present writer in D.N.B., lii., 261.]
Lambert, however, was barely initiated in his new duties when the son
of a boatman of Tournay started on a similar errand with