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“The direction which they look, and the distance they sailed”: The Birth of an Imperial Dynasty, 1485–1509

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Tudor Empire

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Abstract

This chapter examines the twenty-five-year period that began on the Bosworth Battlefield in 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III and became King Henry VII, and ended soon after the turn of the century, restoring the court culture, political backdrop, and possibilities manifest in a royal family that made the most of the oracle Diana’s prophecy to Brutus in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae: the island would bear his name and a race of kings to whom the whole earth will be subject. It shows how amid perennial threat from multiple directions, the interests, and exigencies of a new, unsecured dynasty fueled the rediscovery of a legitimizing British imperial past and trailblazing consolidation at home as well as voyaging abroad.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ayala to Ferdinand and Isabella, 25 July 1498, Calendar of State Papers, Spain, 19 vols. (London, 1862), 1:210.

  2. 2.

    For an excellent study of this historiography, see Steven J. Gunn, “Henry VII in Context: Problems and Possibilities,” History 92, no. 307 (2007): 301–317. Among the king’s champions, the most influential are promoters of the “New Monarchy” thesis, who charge that the king presided over a decisive break from war-torn late-medieval England and ushered in early modernity. His detractors have been buoyed by G.R. Elton’s elevation of the 1530s, K.B. McFarlane’s social approach, and, most recently, the discovery of Richard III’s remains, as well as the strength of the paranoid avarice trope and an Anglo-centric unit of analysis. See J.P. Cooper, “Henry VII’s Last Years Reconsidered,” Historical Journal 2, no. 2 (1959); 103–129; S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973); Elton, “Henry VII: Rapacity and Remorse” and “Henry VII: A Restatement,” Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974): 45–65, 66–99; Benjamin Thompson, ed., The Reign of Henry VII (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1995); Sean Cunningham, Henry VII (London: Routledge, 2007); Mark Horowitz, ed., “Who was Henry VII?” Historical Research 82, no. 217 (2009); William Penn, Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (London: Penguin, 2011). Steven G. Ellis, David Grummitt, and John M. Currin (for the British Isles and France) as well as J.A Williamson, D.B. Quinn, Evan T. Jones, and Kirsten Seaver (for North America) all point to the possibilities of a less insular approach.

  3. 3.

    Michael Jones, Bosworth, 1485: The Battle that Transformed England (NY: Pegasus Books, 2015); Glenn Foard and Anne Curry, Bosworth 1584: A Battlefield Rediscovered (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013); A.J. Pollard, ed., The Wars of the Roses (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Michael Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1985).

  4. 4.

    Gunn, “Henry VII (1457–1509),” ODNB (2008) and “Politic history, New Monarchy and state formation: Henry VII in European perspective,” Historical Research 83, no. 217 (August 2009): 380–392; Cunningham, Henry VII, 10–42; Chrimes, Henry VII, 3–49.

  5. 5.

    C.S.L. Davies, “Bishop John Morton, the Holy See, and the accession of Henry VII,” English Historical Review 102, no. 402 (January 1987): 2–30; Arlene Naylor Okerlund, Elizabeth of York (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 36–37; Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

  6. 6.

    As quoted in Louise R. Loomis, “Nationality at the Council of Constance: An Anglo-French Dispute,” American Historical Review 44, no. 3 (April 1939): 508–527, at 524–525 and Ellis, “Crown, Community, and Government in the English Territories, 1450–1575,” History 71, no. 232 (June 1986): 187–204, at 194. On the rise of English national sentiment, see Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background (London: Macmillan, 1944); J.P. Genet, “English Nationalism: Thomas Polton at the Council of Constance,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 28 (1984): 60–78; Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Robert Colls, Identity of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

  7. 7.

    Andy King, “The Anglo-Scottish Marches and the Perception of ‘the North’ in Fifteenth-Century England,” Northern History 49, no. 1 (March 2012): 37–50; Huw Pryce and John Watts, eds., Power and Identity in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  8. 8.

    Charlotte Augusta Sneyd, ed., A Relation or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England (London: Camden Society, 1847), 20–21, 23.

  9. 9.

    “Richard III’s proclamation against Henry Tudor,” in A.F. Pollard, ed., The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913), 1:4–5.

  10. 10.

    “Henry VII to his friends in England (1485),” in Kings’ Letters: From the Early Tudors, Part II, ed. Robert Steele (London: Chatto and Windus, 1907), 1.

  11. 11.

    “Henry’s alleged manifesto to his army on the eve of the battle of Bosworth… from Hall’s ‘Chronicle’,” Contemporary Sources, 1:6–10, at 10.

  12. 12.

    Manifesto, Contemporary Sources, 1:7.

  13. 13.

    Manifesto, Contemporary Sources, 1:8.

  14. 14.

    Grafton, A Chronicle at Large (1569), in Grafton’s Chronicle (London, 1809), 2:132.

  15. 15.

    Grafton, Chronicle, 2:157.

  16. 16.

    Chrimes, Henry VII, 42–43.

  17. 17.

    Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. by Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1966), 65.

  18. 18.

    Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, 171.

  19. 19.

    Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, 213–261.

  20. 20.

    Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, 281.

  21. 21.

    Denys Hay, ed., The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, A.D. 1485–1537 (London: Camden Society, 1950), 5.

  22. 22.

    Cunningham, Henry VII, 270–271. Even Ayala noted the special hold of such tales on British minds, writing to Ferdinand and Isabella that “the people of England believe in prophecies. In Wales there are many who tell fortunes,” relying on “signs and ceremonies which they perform,” 26 March 1499, CSPS 1:239.

  23. 23.

    “Circular letter of Henry VII,” Contemporary Sources, 1:11–12, at 12.

  24. 24.

    Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 106.

  25. 25.

    Anglo, Spectacle, 10–12.

  26. 26.

    “Little Device for the Coronation of Henry VII,” in Leopold G. Wickham, ed., English Coronation Records (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1901), 222.

  27. 27.

    “Little Device,” 226.

  28. 28.

    “Little Device,” 228.

  29. 29.

    “Little Device,” 230.

  30. 30.

    “The Roll of the Parliament held at Westminster on 7 November in the First Year of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh,” Part I, in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, eds. Chris Given-Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry, and Rosemary Horrox (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), vi-267, col. a.

  31. 31.

    “Titulus Regis,” Parliament Rolls, vi-270, col. b.

  32. 32.

    Parliament Rolls, vi-270, col. b. and vi-274, col. a.

  33. 33.

    “The Roll of the Parliament of Henry VII of the Twelfth Year of his Reign,” 16 January–13 March 1497, Parliament Rolls, vi-509, col. a.

  34. 34.

    Grafton, Chronicle, 2:160.

  35. 35.

    Our holy fadre the Pope Innocent the .viij. To the p[er]petuall memory of this here after (1486). All early printed books were published in London unless otherwise stated.

  36. 36.

    “1486 York,” in Records of Early English Drama: York, eds. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 149.

  37. 37.

    “1486 York,” 150.

  38. 38.

    “First Provincial Progress of Henry VII,” in Records of Early English Drama: Herefordshire, Worcestershire (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), ed. David N. Klausner, 406.

  39. 39.

    “First Provincial Progress,” 410.

  40. 40.

    David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Anglo, Spectacle, 33. Henry would visit Bristol again 1496, see Cabot Voyages, 43.

  41. 41.

    “1486 York,” 139.

  42. 42.

    “1486 York,” 140.

  43. 43.

    Anne Lancashire, London Civic Theater: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 143.

  44. 44.

    The association appeared in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur (published in England the year of Bosworth). Robert Allen Rouse and Cory James Rushton, “Arthurian Geography,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arthurian Legend, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 218–234.

  45. 45.

    André, De Arturo sacrosancto fonte regnato in Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, ed. James Gairdner (London: 1858), 41–42; Gigli, Epithalamium de nuptiis, BL Harl. MS 336; Carmeliano, Brixiensis poete suasoria Leticie ad Angliam pro sublatis bellis ciuilibus et Arthuro principe nato epistola, BL Add MS 33736.

  46. 46.

    André, De Arturo, 42.

  47. 47.

    André, De Arturo, 41–42.

  48. 48.

    Anglo, Spectacle, 46–47.

  49. 49.

    Thomas Hearne, ed., Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii De Rebvs Britannicis Collectanea (London: 1774), 4:204.

  50. 50.

    Mary Dormer Harris, ed., The Coventry Leet Book (Oxford, 1907), 2: 590.

  51. 51.

    Coventry Leet Book, 2:590–591.

  52. 52.

    Coventry Leet Book, 2:589–590.

  53. 53.

    Gunn, “The Courtiers of Henry VII,” English Historical Review 108, no. 426 (January 1993): 23–49, at 23.

  54. 54.

    Raimondo de Raimondi de Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 8 September 1497, in Calendar of State Papers Milan, 1385–1618, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London, 1912), 540.

  55. 55.

    Carlson, English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscripts and Print, 1475–1525 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 17.

  56. 56.

    Paul O. Kristeller, “The European Diffusion of Italian Humanism,” Italica 39, no. 1 (March 1962): 1–20; Hay, The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 179–203; Albert Rabil, Jr., ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).

  57. 57.

    Ayala to Ferdinand and Isabella, 25 July 1498, CSPS 1:210; Chrimes, Henry VII, 57, 109, 240; Cunningham, Henry VII, 21–25, 174; Penn, Winter King, 50, 94–104; David Starkey wrote that their correspondence “reads more like the letters of two lovers than of mother and son,” Henry: Virtuous Prince (London: HarperPress, 2008), 19.

  58. 58.

    Peter Cross and Maurice Hugh Keen, eds., Heraldry, Pageantry, and Social Display in Medieval England (London: Boydell, 2002), 133; Jones and Underwood, King’s Mother, 43.

  59. 59.

    “For the countess of Richmond,” Parliament Rolls, vi-284, col. b–vi-285, col. b.

  60. 60.

    Jones and Underwood, King’s Mother, 93–136; Linda Simon, Of Virtue Rare: Margaret Beaufort, Matriarch of the House of Tudor (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1982), 97–106.

  61. 61.

    Jones and Underwood, King’s Mother, 74; Simon, Of Virtue Rare, 3–4.

  62. 62.

    Carlson, “The Royal Tutors of Henry VII,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 2 (1991): 253–279.

  63. 63.

    On English humanism, see Jonathan Woolfson, ed., Reassessing Tudor Humanism (London: Palgrave, 2002); Carlson, English Humanist Books; J.B. Trapp, Erasmus, Colet, and More: The Early Tudor Humanists and their Books (London: British Library, 1991); Fredric Seebolm, The Oxford Reformers: Colet, Erasmus, and More (Edinburgh: Everyman’s Library, 1914). On education, see Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Routledge, 1984); Joan Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 59–101; Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

  64. 64.

    André, Vita Henrici Septimi, in James Gairdner, ed., Historia regis Henrici Septimi (London, 1858), 6–7.

  65. 65.

    André, Vita Henrici Septimi, 43. André’s curriculum bears strong resemblance to what John Skelton created for the future Henry VIII, Juan Luis Vives for Mary I, John Cheke for Edward VI, and Roger Ascham for Elizabeth I.

  66. 66.

    Skelton, Agenst Garnesche in John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, ed. John Scattergood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 132.

  67. 67.

    James P. Carley, ed., The Libraries of King Henry VIII (London: British Library, 2000); Carley, Books of Henry VIII and his Wives (London: British Library, 2005).

  68. 68.

    Gunn, “Chivalry and the Politics of the Early Tudor Court” in Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. Anglo (Rochester: Boydell, 1990), 107–128. Geoffrey of Monmouth enjoyed something similar, see Walter Ullmann, “On the Influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth in English History,” in Speculum Historiale, eds. C. Bauer, L. Böhm, and M. Müller (Freiburg, 1965): 257–276.

  69. 69.

    Carley, Libraries of Henry VIII, 217, 195–196.

  70. 70.

    In 1501, Skelton composed his Speculum principis, which extolled the relationship between Alexander and Aristotle, for his pupil, the future Henry VIII; in 1512, he presented him with a chronicle of the Crusades, Réctis d’un ménestrel de Reims, with instructive annotations suggesting it didactic use. A.S.G. Edwards, ed., Skelton: the critical heritage (London: Routledge, 1981), 130–131; Maurice Pollet, John Skelton: Poet of Tudor England (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1962); William Nelson, John Skelton, Laureate (NY: Russell & Russell, 1964); Greg Walker, John Skelton and the Politics of the 1520s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Robert S. Kinsman and David R Carlson, eds., John Skelton and Early Modern Culture (Tempe: ACMRS, 2008).

  71. 71.

    Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 9.

  72. 72.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia (1555), ed. Dana F. Sutton (Philological Museum, 2010), Book I, paragraph 19. Vergil kept the rest of the history intact and his skepticism ultimately backfired, encouraging Leland’s steadfast assertion of Arthur’s veracity, see Carley, “Polydore Vergil and John Leland on King Arthur: The Battle of the Books,” Interpretations 15, no. 2 (Spring, 1984): 86–100.

  73. 73.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book I, paragraph 19.

  74. 74.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book I, paragraph 1.

  75. 75.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book III, paragraph 1.

  76. 76.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XIII, paragraph 9.

  77. 77.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Books XIII (Henry II), XVII (Edward I), XIX (Edward III), and XXII (Henry V).

  78. 78.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XXVI, paragraph 1.

  79. 79.

    Patrick Collinson, Richard Rex, and Graham Stanton, Lady Margaret Beaufort and her Professors of Divinity at Cambridge, 1502–1649 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Jones and Underwood, King’s Mother, 202–231.

  80. 80.

    Caxton, Blanchardyn and Eglantine (London, 1489), 1.

  81. 81.

    Caxton, Eneydos (London, 1490), “Prologue.” See also Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 23–50.

  82. 82.

    Carley, Libraries of Henry VIII, 154 (Salisbury), 81, 195, 204 (Galen), 160–161 and 164 (Sibylla).

  83. 83.

    Penn, Winter King, 182.

  84. 84.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 8 September 1497, CSPM 540.

  85. 85.

    Sneyd, ed., A Relation, 46.

  86. 86.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 26 January 1499, CSPM 601.

  87. 87.

    Ayala to Ferdinand and Isabella, 25 July 1498, CSPS 1:210.

  88. 88.

    Gunn, “Henry VII” and “Courtiers,” 26, 36–38.

  89. 89.

    Ellis, “Tudor State Formation and the Shaping of the British Isles,” in Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725, ed. Ellis and Sarah Barber (NY: Longman, 1995), 40–63, at 44.

  90. 90.

    The bull is printed in Eleanor Hull, A History of Ireland, Volume I (London: Harrap & Co., 1926), Appendix I. On Gerald’s use of it, see Anne Duggan, “The Making of a Myth: Giraldus Cambrensis, Laudabiliter, and Henry II’s Lordship of Ireland,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3, no. 4 (2007): 107–126.

  91. 91.

    Hull, History of Ireland, Appendix I.

  92. 92.

    James Ware, Two Histories of Ireland. The one written by Edmund Campion, the other by Meredith Hanmer Dr of Divinity (Dublin, 1633), 28.

  93. 93.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. John H. Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 97.

  94. 94.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 213.

  95. 95.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 299.

  96. 96.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 121.

  97. 97.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 119.

  98. 98.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 309.

  99. 99.

    R.S. Thomas, “Tudor, Jasper, Duke of Bedford (c. 1431–1495),” ODNB (2008).

  100. 100.

    On York’s appointment, which may have been a form of political exile, see Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996). On Ireland and the Yorkist cause during the civil wars, see David Grummitt, A Short History of the Wars of the Roses (NY: IB Tauris, 2013), especially 29–30 and 53–74.

  101. 101.

    “Instruccions yeven by the kinges grace unto h[is] counseillour and servant John Estrete to be shewed to Therl of Kildare,” 1486 (?), in Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 2 vols., ed. James Gairdner (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), 1:91–93, at 91.

  102. 102.

    There is some evidence that Simnel later pretended to be the younger of those two princes, as André and Vergil reported. See Michael J. Bennett, “Simnel, Lambert (b. 1476/7, d. after 1534),” ODNB (2008).

  103. 103.

    “A letter of the Earl of Lincoln,” Contemporary Sources, 1:50. On Margaret’s support, see “Chronicle of Calais,” Contemporary Sources, 1:51; Bennett, Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).

  104. 104.

    Earl of Oxford (?) to Sir Edmond Bedyngfeld, May 1487, in Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part II, ed. Norman Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 453.

  105. 105.

    Henry VII to the Earl of Ormond, 13 May 1487, Kings’ Letters, 2:20.

  106. 106.

    “From the ‘Book of Howth,’” Contemporary Sources, 3:261–265, at 264.

  107. 107.

    “An act of conviction and attainder,” 9 November- ? 18 December 1487, Parliament Rolls, vi-397, col. b.

  108. 108.

    Book of Howth, Contemporary Sources, 3:264.

  109. 109.

    “Henry VII to the Pope,” 5 July 1487, Letters and Papers, 1:94–96.

  110. 110.

    “An act of conviction and attainder,” 9 November- ? 18 December 1487, Parliament Rolls, vi-397, col. b.

  111. 111.

    “An act of conviction and attainder,” 9 November- ? 18 December 1487, Parliament Rolls, vi-398, col. a.

  112. 112.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XXVI, paragraph 5.

  113. 113.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XXVI, paragraph 24, describing the Warbeck plot.

  114. 114.

    Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587), 6:766.

  115. 115.

    “Henry VII to Gilbert Talbot,” 12 September 1497, Contemporary Sources, 1:162–163.

  116. 116.

    Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry VII, 2 vols. (London; Stationery Office, 1914), 1:225.

  117. 117.

    “The Voyage of Sir Richard Edgecomb into Ireland,” BL Cotton MS Titus B.xi, fols. 332–377, in Hibernica, or some antient Pieces relating to Ireland, ed. Walter Harris (Dublin, 1747–1750), 59–77, at 65.

  118. 118.

    Lords of Ireland to Henry VII, undated (ca. 1489–1493), Letters and Papers, 1:377–379, at 377–378.

  119. 119.

    Lords of Ireland to Henry VII, undated (ca. 1489–1493), Letters and Papers, 1:377–379, at 378.

  120. 120.

    Gerald Earl of Kildare to Henry VII, undated (ca. 1489–1493), Letters and Papers 1:380.

  121. 121.

    Gerald Earl of Kildare to Henry VII, undated (ca. 1489–1493), Letters and Papers 1:381. The Earl of Desmond defended Kildare’s refusal to travel to Henry VII, Letters and Papers 1:381–382. Kildare also protested his innocence, specifically in the latest pretender plot, to the Earl of Ormond in 1493, Letters and Papers 2:55–56.

  122. 122.

    “An Act of Attainder against the Earl of Kildare,” Contemporary Sources, 3:277.

  123. 123.

    Including Henry Deane and Hugh Conway. These appointments meant that Englishmen now dominated the Irish council, see Ellis, “Poynings, Sir Edward (1459–1521),” ODNB (2004).

  124. 124.

    “Annals of Ulster,” Contemporary Sources 3:276. Poynings landed in October, reaching Ulster in November.

  125. 125.

    Ellis, “Poynings.” As Ellis notes, Poynings’s actual instructions were more circumscribed, see Calendar of Patent Rolls Henry VII, 2:12–15.

  126. 126.

    10 Henry VII, c. 3, Contemporary Sources, 3:296–298, at 296.

  127. 127.

    10 Henry VII, c. 2, Contemporary Sources, 3:295–296, at 295.

  128. 128.

    Chrimes, Henry VII, 263.

  129. 129.

    “A Statute of the Fortieth Year of King Edward III,” in Tracts Relating to Ireland, Volume 2, ed. James Hardiman (Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society, 1843), 3–121. The statutes helped make Edward III with Henry II the major medieval exemplas in sixteenth-century literature urging English intervention in Ireland.

  130. 130.

    10 Henry VII, c. 8, Contemporary Sources, 3:301–302.

  131. 131.

    10 Henry VII, c. 2, Contemporary Sources, 3:295–296.

  132. 132.

    10 Henry VII, c. 17, Contemporary Sources, 3:305–306.

  133. 133.

    10 Henry VII, c. 6, Contemporary Sources, 3:300–301.

  134. 134.

    10 Henry VII, c. 13, Contemporary Sources, 3:304.

  135. 135.

    10 Henry VII, c. 12, Contemporary Sources, 3:303–304.

  136. 136.

    10 Henry VII, c. 14, Contemporary Sources, 3:305.

  137. 137.

    For the full parliamentary record, see Philomena Connolly, ed., Statute Rolls of the Irish Parliament, Richard III-Henry VIII (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), 10 Henry VII.

  138. 138.

    10 Henry VII, c. 4, Contemporary Sources, 3:298–299, at 298.

  139. 139.

    10 Henry VII, c. 22, Contemporary Sources, 3:309–310, at 310. Note that by alternate numbering, these two statutes are c. 9 and c. 39. For further study, see Quinn, “The Early Interpretation of Poynings Law, 1494–1534,” Irish Historical Studies 2, no. 7 (1941): 241–254; R. Dudley Edwards and T.W. Moody, “The History of Poynings’ Law,” Irish Historical Studies 2, no. 8 (1941): 415–424; Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), especially 146–154; Ellis, Reform and Revival: English Government in Ireland, 1470–1534 (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1986); James Kelly, Poynings Law and the Making of Law in Ireland, 1660–1800 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2007), 1–14; Ellis, “Henry VII and Ireland, 1491–1496,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J.F. Lydon (Dublin: Blackrock, 1981), 237–254.

  140. 140.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XXVI, paragraph 29.

  141. 141.

    “For the Earl of Kildare,” 14 October–21 December 1495, Parliament Rolls, vi-481 col. b–vi-482, col. b.

  142. 142.

    “Indenture between the Earl of Kildare, Walter, Archbishop of Dublin, Thomas, Earl of Ormond, and Sir James Ormond, made in the presence of the King and Council,” 6 August 1496, and “Articles sworn to by the Earl of Kildare in the presence of the King and Council before his return to Ireland as Deputy,” August 1496, in Henry VII’s Relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485–1498, ed. Agnes Conway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 226–229, 230–232.

  143. 143.

    11 Henry VII, c. 34 in Relations with Scotland and Ireland, 215–216, at 215; Ellis, Defending English Ground: War and Peace in Meath and Northumberland, 1460–1542 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 28.

  144. 144.

    As John R. Cramsie argued, Worcestre wrote “in a distinctly British frame of mind.” British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain, 1450–1700 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015). See also Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 1307 to the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1998), 167, 322–40; K.B. McFarlane, “William Worchester: A Preliminary Survey,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), 199–224.

  145. 145.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 43, 45.

  146. 146.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 45.

  147. 147.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 95.

  148. 148.

    Though his claim that Arthur kept the Round Table in Stirling, however, must have rankled many, Worcestre, Itineraries, 213, 7.

  149. 149.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 179.

  150. 150.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 7.

  151. 151.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 303.

  152. 152.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 47.

  153. 153.

    Worcestre, Itineraries, 135.

  154. 154.

    “An Acte ‘for reperacyons of the Navee,’ 1 Henry VII, c. 8,” Contemporary Sources, 2:266–267, at 266.

  155. 155.

    Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery, 188–189, at 189.

  156. 156.

    “Against Ships going to Iceland,” 23 February 1484, Letters and Papers, 2:287.

  157. 157.

    Quinn, “The Argument for the English Discovery of America between 1480 and 1494,” The Geographical Journal, 127, no. 3 (September 1961): 277–285, at 279.

  158. 158.

    Henry VII to the Earl of Oxford, 6 April 1491, Contemporary Sources, 2: 253–254, at 253.

  159. 159.

    Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 3 vols. (London, 1598–1600), hereafter PN, 1:187–208, at 187 and 199. Hakluyt arranged the poem alongside charters, grants, laws, agreements, and chronicles demonstrating England’s longstanding richness in foreign trade.

  160. 160.

    Sneyd, ed., A Relation, 23.

  161. 161.

    James Robert Enterline, Erikson, Eskimos and Columbus: Medieval European knowledge of America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 170–176; Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), chapter 1.

  162. 162.

    L.F. Benedetto, ed., and Aldo Ricci, trans., The Travels of Marco Polo (London: Routledge, 1931), 270–271. Royal printers published Mandeville in 1496 and 99. On their impact, see Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Anthony Bale, ed., The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); M.C. Seymour, Sir John Mandeville (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993); Williamson, ed., The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1962), 3–7.

  163. 163.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, CSPM 552.

  164. 164.

    9 November–18 December 1487, Parliament Rolls, vi-385–408, at vi-395, col. a. Henry’s new attention to Calais is also apparent in his 30 September 1487 proclamation on the exchange rate, Contemporary Sources, 2: 275–276.

  165. 165.

    Spain was given the same out if France restored Roussillon and Cerdaña. Treaty between England and Spain, 27–28 March 1489, CSPS, 1:34, emphasis added.

  166. 166.

    Ramusio, Primo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Venice, 1550), Cabot Voyages, 270–273, at 272. Ramusio claimed that his information came from a “Mantuan Gentleman,” who spoke to Sebastian Cabot.

  167. 167.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, CSPM 552.

  168. 168.

    Katherine of Aragon to Juana of Castile, 25 October 1507, CSPS 1:553. By reign’s end, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Portugal were also vying for alliances (marital, martial, and commercial) with Henry, an indication of the dynasty’s European stature and connections, see Thomas Lopez to Emmanuel King of Portugal, 10 October 1505, Letters and Papers, 2:146–149; Maximillian to Henry VII, 20 July 1506, Letters and Papers, 2: 153–154.

  169. 169.

    Hoak, “The Iconography of the Crown Imperial,” in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 54–103, at 65–70; Metcalf, Coins of Henry VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); C.E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978).

  170. 170.

    Including Great Malvern Priory Church, St. Mary’s Hall Coventry, St. Catherine’s Church Ludham, Alton Church Hampshire, and St. George’s Chapel Windsor. Hoak, “Iconography,” 70–75; Eamon Duffy, Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), especially 164–165.

  171. 171.

    De Puebla to Ferdinand and Isabella, 11 January 1500, Letters and Papers, 1:113–119, at 113–114.

  172. 172.

    C.L. Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 247.

  173. 173.

    Anglo, Spectacle, 61.

  174. 174.

    Anglo, Spectacle, 84.

  175. 175.

    Anglo, Spectacle, 61.

  176. 176.

    The Antiquarian Repertory, 4 vols. (London: 1808), 2:264

  177. 177.

    Henry VII to Ferdinand and Isabella, 28 November 1501, CSPS 1:311.

  178. 178.

    “An act agaynst captaynes for not paying theire soldyers their wages, and agaynst soldyers going from their captaynes without licence,” 17 October 1491–1495 March 1492, Parliament Rolls, vi-457, col. a.

  179. 179.

    Currin, “‘To Traffic with War’? Henry VII and the French Campaign of 1492,” in The English Experience in France c. 1450–1558: War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange, ed. Grummitt (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 106–131, at 108–109. Currin has thoroughly examined Henry’s policies, showing that the king did harbor French pretensions.

  180. 180.

    Challis, Tudor Coinage, 52.

  181. 181.

    “The prenostacion of Alfons Frysaunn[c]e, clerke of Mayster Skalgaynes, astrologe to the Grete Turke, resident in the grete town Dary in Alexander,” in Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton (London: 1911), 264.

  182. 182.

    De Puebla to Ferdinand and Isabella, 25 August 1498, CSPS 1:221.

  183. 183.

    On the relationship between James IV and Warbeck, from a Scottish perspective, see David Dunlop, “The ‘Masked Comedian’: Perkin Warbeck’s Adventures in Scotland and England from 1495 to 1497,” The Scottish Historical Review 70, no. 190, pt. 2 (October 1991): 97–128.

  184. 184.

    Henry VII to Lord Stanley, 15 October 1485, Contemporary Sources 1:19–20, at 19.

  185. 185.

    Henry VII to Henry Vernon, 17 October 1485, Contemporary Sources 1:21.

  186. 186.

    John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, to John Paston, 20 October 1485, Contemporary Sources 1:21–22, at 21.

  187. 187.

    The Book of Howth’s use of the Polychronicon is particularly useful here, see Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, ed. J.S. Brewer, 6 vols. (London: 1871), 6:241–242.

  188. 188.

    Demonstrating that “the Britons once occupied the land from sea to sea.” Geoffrey of Monmouth, History, 54.

  189. 189.

    “The Barons’ Letter to Boniface VIII: from Lincoln, Feb. 12, 1301,” in Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church, ed. B.J. Kidd (London: Macmillan, 1941), 3:182–184, at 183; Michael Prestwich, “Colonial Scotland: The English in Scotland under Edward I,” in Scotland and England, ed. Roger Mason (Edinburgh: Donald, 1987): 6–17; J.R. Goldstein, “The Scottish Mission to Boniface VIII,” Scottish Historical Review 70, no. 189 (1991): 1–15.

  190. 190.

    “Contra Scotos,” 17 October 1491–1495 March 1492, Parliament Rolls, vi-456, col. a.

  191. 191.

    Henry VII to Talbot, 20 July 1493, Contemporary Sources 1:93–95, at 94.

  192. 192.

    Soncino to Duke of Milan, 30 September 1497, CSPM 545.

  193. 193.

    “Perkin Warbeck’s proclamation,” Contemporary Sources 1:150–155, at 155, 150, 153. Italian reports also stressed Henry’s miserliness: “if fortune allowed some lord of the blood royal to rise and he had to take the field, he would fare badly owing to his avarice; and his people would abandon him… as they did King Richard.” Giovanni de Bebulcho to Messer Bartolomeo Chalco, Secretary to the Duke of Milan, 3 July 1496, CSPM 490.

  194. 194.

    “Perkin Warbeck’s proclamation,” Contemporary Sources 1:150–155, at 151, 154, 151, 154.

  195. 195.

    Summary of a letter from Soncino, 16 September 1497, CSPM 541.

  196. 196.

    Chronicles of London, 217–219.

  197. 197.

    “Skelton Laureate agaynste a comely coystrowne” (completed ca. 1498) (London, 1527).

  198. 198.

    Puebla to Ferdinand and Isabella, 11 January 1500, Letters and Papers, 1:113–119, at 113.

  199. 199.

    Chronicles of London, 222. On Henry’s eagerness, see “Fox’s Instructions,” 5 July 1497, Letters and Papers, 1:104–111. It also facilitated Arthur’s wedding, see Ferdinand and Isabella to Puebla, 27 April 1496, CSPS 1:113.

  200. 200.

    Henry VII to the mayor and citizens of Waterford, 17 October 1497, Contemporary Sources 1:173–176, at 175; Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London, 219–222.

  201. 201.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 8 September 1497, CSPM 540.

  202. 202.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, CSPM 553.

  203. 203.

    Ayala to Ferdinand and Isabella, 25 January 1498, CSPS 1:210.

  204. 204.

    Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera, Volume 12 (London: Churchill Press, 1711), 24 January 1502, “Indentura pro Pace & Amicitia, inter Reges supradictos”; “Indenture on Treaty of Perpetual Peace,” 24 January 1502, NAS SP 6/29–30.

  205. 205.

    Vergil, Anglica Historia, Book XXVI, paragraph 41.

  206. 206.

    Hall’s Chronicle Containing the History of England, ed. Henry Ellis (London: 1809), 498.

  207. 207.

    Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII, ed. J. Rawson Lumby (Cambridge, 1902), 189.

  208. 208.

    Bodrugan, An epitome of the title that the Kynges Maiestie of Englande, hath to the souereigntie of Scotlande (London: 1548), sigs. g.iii.v–g.iiii.r.

  209. 209.

    Bodrugan, An epitome, sig. a.iii.v.

  210. 210.

    “News received from England,” 24 August 1497, CSPM 535.

  211. 211.

    Isabella to de Puebla, 12 September 1496, CSPS 1:158.

  212. 212.

    Quinn, “Cabot, John (c. 1451–98),” DNB (2010); “Vergil on John Cabot,” Cabot Voyages, 224–225, at 225.

  213. 213.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, Cabot Voyages, 209–211, at 209.

  214. 214.

    Cabot Voyages, 49–53, which also takes up whether Henry VII knew of the Treaty of Tordesillas; H.P. Biggar, ed., The Precursors of Jacques Cartier, 1497–1534 (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1911), 8–10, at 9.

  215. 215.

    “Lorenzo Pasqualigo’s letter from London,” 23 August 1497, Precursors, 13–15, at 14.

  216. 216.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, Cabot Voyages, 209. See Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  217. 217.

    “The Eighth Legend of the World Map of 1544,” Cabot Voyages, 207. On its relevance, see Cabot Voyages, 25.

  218. 218.

    “Day [sometimes given as Jay or Hugh Say] to the Lord Grand Admiral,” Cabot Voyages, 211–214, at 212–213.

  219. 219.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, Cabot Voyages, 210.

  220. 220.

    Soncino to the Duke of Milan, 18 December 1497, Cabot Voyages, 209–211. On the much-debated actual place of landfall, which ranges from Maine to Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and Labrador, and exploration, see Peter E. Pope, The Many Landfalls of John Cabot (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 24–40, 69–89.

  221. 221.

    Pasqualigo’s letter, Precursors, 14.

  222. 222.

    “Entries from the daybooks of the king’s payments,” “Grant of pension to John Cabot,” “Warrant for Payment of John Cabot’s Pension,” and “Payments of John Cabot’s Pension,” Cabot Voyages, 214–219.

  223. 223.

    Dated 3 February 1498, Precursors, 23–24, at 23.

  224. 224.

    The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A.H. Thomas and E.D. Thornley (London, 1938), 287–288.

  225. 225.

    8 June 1501, Cabot Voyages, 233–234, at 233.

  226. 226.

    “Pietro Pasqualigo, Venetian Ambassador in Portugal, to his brothers in Venice,” 19 October 1501, Cabot Voyages, 229–230. The original grant, dated 12 May 1500, is printed in Precursors, 35–37.

  227. 227.

    Great Chronicle, 320. Hakluyt reproduced the text almost exactly, but called them “Sauages” and attached Sebastian Cabot’s name to their arrival, see Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (London: 1582), sigs. A3r–v. Pope argued that the Anglo-Azorean syndicate brought them back, see Many Landfalls, 167.

  228. 228.

    “Petition of Certain Merchants to Henry VII,” 19 March 1501, Precursors, 40.

  229. 229.

    “In regard to the grant to Richard Warde and others,” Precursors, 50–59, at 51, 52, 54, 55, and 56.

  230. 230.

    As Williamson argued, see Cabot Voyages, 128–130.

  231. 231.

    Grant of Pensions, 26 September 1502, Cabot Voyages, 248–249, at 249. The payment is recorded on 262.

  232. 232.

    Letters Patent, 9 December 1502, Cabot Voyages, 250–261, at 251.

  233. 233.

    “The booke made by the right worshipful M. Robert Thorne in the yeere 1527,” PN, 1:214–221, at 219; “Dee’s Statements on the Date of the Discovery of North America,” Cabot Voyages, 201–202.

  234. 234.

    “The Company Adventurers to the New Found Lands,” 1506, Cabot Voyages, 262–263, at 263.

  235. 235.

    “Entries from the Daybooks of the King’s Payments,” 8 April 1504 and 25 August 1505, Cabot Voyages, 216.

  236. 236.

    “Grant of Pension to Sebastian Cabot,” 3 April 1505, Cabot Voyages, 265.

  237. 237.

    Williamson engages in an in-depth comparative study of the reports, see Cabot Voyages, 145–170.

  238. 238.

    Peter Martyr, The History of Travayle in the West and East Indies (1577), fols. 233r–v.

  239. 239.

    Richard Eden, trans., Martyr, The decades of the newe worlde or west India (1555), fol. 119r.

  240. 240.

    Eden, “Preface to the Reader,” in Martyr, Decades, sig. cir.

  241. 241.

    Humphrey Gilbert, A discourse of a discouerie for a new passage to Cataia (1576), sig. Diiir.

  242. 242.

    Eden, trans., Martyr, Decades, fol. 119r.

  243. 243.

    “Peter Martyr’s First Account of Sebastian Cabot’s Voyage,” Cabot Voyages, 266–268, at 267.

  244. 244.

    Best, A true discourse of the late voyages of discouerie (1578), 16.

  245. 245.

    “Marcantonio Contarini’s Report on Sebastian Cabot’s Voyage,” 1536, Cabot Voyages, 270.

  246. 246.

    Ramusio, again citing the “Mantuan Gentleman,” in Navigationi et Viaggi, Cabot Voyages, 272.

  247. 247.

    Ramusio seems to refer to the events of 1497 (rebellion and war with Scotland), yet Sebastian did not enter Spanish service until after the 1508 voyage. Williamson, ed., Cabot Voyages, 150–154; Pope, Many Landfalls, 61–62.

  248. 248.

    Brant, The Ship of Fools, trans. Barclay, ed. T.H. Jamieson, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Patterson, 1874), at 2:24, 25, 26, 27. Pynson published the text. See also David Armitage, “Literature and Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume I: The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 99–123, at 111.

  249. 249.

    Ship of Fools, 2:205.

  250. 250.

    Ship of Fools, 2:206, 209

  251. 251.

    “Epistle 210,” 27 May 1509, in The Epistles of Erasmus, trans. Francis Morgan Nichols, 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901–1918), 1:457–461, at 457.

  252. 252.

    Skelton, “A lawde and prayse made for our souereigne lord the kyng,” in The Poetical Works of John Skelton, ed. Alexander Dyce, 2 vols. (London: Rodd, 1843), 1:ix–xi.

  253. 253.

    Hawes, A ioyfull medytacyon to all Englonde of the coronacyon of our moost naturall souerayne lorde kynge Henry the eyght (1509), [2]. The wood-cut appears on [1].

  254. 254.

    Hall’s Chronicle, 507–512, at 510.

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Hower, J.S. (2020). “The direction which they look, and the distance they sailed”: The Birth of an Imperial Dynasty, 1485–1509. In: Tudor Empire. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62892-5_2

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