Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
An absurd law had been made in the preceding reign, by which every one was prohibited from making cloth unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years.
The law was repealed in the first year of the queen; and this plain reason given, that it had occasioned the decay of the woollen manufactory, and had ruined several towns.
o
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It is strange that Edward’s law should have been revived during the reign of Elizabeth; and still more strange, that it should still subsist.
A passage to Archangel had been discovered by the English during the last reign; and a beneficial trade with Muscovy had been established. A solemn embassy was sent by the czar to queen Mary. The ambassadors were shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland; but being hospitably entertained there, they proceeded on the journey, and were received at London with great pomp and solemnity.
p
This seems to have been the first intercourse, which that empire had with any of the western potentates of Europe.
A law was passed in this reign,q
by which the number of horses, arms, and furniture, was fixed, which each person, according to the extent of his property, should be provided with for the defence of the kingdom. A man of a thousand pounds a-year, for instance, was obliged to maintain at his own charge six horses fit for demi-lances, of which three at least to be furnished with sufficient harness, steel saddles, and weapons proper for the demi-lances; and ten horses fit for light horsemen, with furniture and weapons proper for them: He was obliged to have forty corslets furnished: fifty almain revets, or instead of them, forty coats of plate, corslets or brigandines furnished; forty pikes, thirty long bows, thirty sheafs of arrows, thirty steel caps or skulls, twenty black bills or halberts, twenty haquebuts, and twenty morions or sallets.
We may remark, that a man of a thousand marks of stock was rated equal to one of two hundred pounds a-year: A proof that few or none at that time lived on their stock in money, and that great profits were made by the merchants in the course of trade.
There is no class above a thousand pounds a-year.
We may form a notion of the little progress made in arts and refinement about this time from one circumstance: A man of no less rank than the comptroller of Edward IV.’s household payed only thirty shillings a year of our present money for his house in Channel Row:
r
Yet labour and provisions, and consequently houses, were only about a third of the present price. Erasmus ascribes the frequent plagues in England to the nastiness and dirt and slovenly habits among the people. “The floors,” says he,
“are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and
Hollingshed, who lived in queen Elizabeth’s reign, gives a very curious account of the plain or rather rude way of living of the preceding generation. There scarcely was a chimney to the houses, even in considerable towns: The fire was kindled by the wall, and the smoke sought its way out at the roof, or door, or windows: The houses were nothing but watling plaistered over with clay: The people slept on straw pallets, and had a good round log under their head for a pillow; and almost all the furniture and utensils were of wood.
NOTE [U]
In this reign we find the first general law with regard to high ways, which were appointed to be repaired by parish duty all over England.
u
[a]Rymer, tom. vii. p. 849. Coke’s inst. 4. Inst. part 1. p. 37.
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[b]Bacon in Kennet’s complete History, p. 579.
[d]Bacon, p. 579. Polydore Virgil, p. 565.
[g]Rot. Parl. I Hen. VII. n. 2, 3, 4–15, 17, 26–65.
[o]Polydore Virgil, p. 569, 570.
[q]Bacon, p. 583. Polydore Virgil, p. 571.
[s]Bacon, p. 586. Pol. Virg. p. 574.
[w]Argertré Hist. de Fretagne, liv. xii.
[y]Polydore Virgil, p. 579, says, that this imposition was a capitation tax; the other
historians say, it was a tax of two shillings in the pound.
[a]Du Tillet, Recueil des Traites.
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[b]Rymer, vol. xii. p. 446. Bacon says that the benevolence was levied with consent
of parliament, which is a mistake.
[d]Bacon, p. 605. Pol. Virg. p. 586.
[i]Bacon, p. 611. Polyd. Virg. p. 593.
[m]Bacon, p. 615. Polydore Virgil, p. 596, 597.
[NOTE [A]]
Stowe, Baker, Speed, Biondi, Hollingshed, Bacon. Some late writers, particularly Mr. Carte, have doubted whether Perkin were an impostor, and have even asserted him to be the true Plantagenet. But to refute this opinion, we need only reflect on the following particulars: (1) Though the circumstances of the wars between the two roses be in general involved in great obscurity, yet is there a most luminous ray thrown on all the transactions, during the usurpation of Richard, and the murder of the two young princes, by the narrative of Sir Thomas More, whose singular magnanimity, probity, and judgment, make him an evidence beyond all exception! No historian, either of ancient or modern times, can possibly have more weight: He may also be justly esteemed a contemporary with regard to the murder of the two princes: For though he was but five years of age when that event happened, he lived and was educated among the chief actors during the period of Richard: And it is plain, from his narrative itself, which is often extremely circumstantial, that he had the particulars from the eye-witnesses themselves: His authority, therefore, is irresistible; and sufficient to overbalance a hundred little doubts and scruples and objections. For in reality, his narrative is liable to no solid objection, nor is there any mistake detected in it. He says indeed, that the protector’s partizans, particularly Dr. Shaw, spread abroad rumours of Edward IV.’s precontract with Elizabeth Lucy; whereas it now appears PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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from record, that the parliament afterwards declared the king’s children illegitimate, on pretence of his pre-contract with lady Eleanor Talbot. But it must be remarked, that neither of these pre-contracts was ever so much as attempted to be proved: And why might not the protector’s flatterers and partizans have made use sometimes of one false rumour, sometimes of another? Sir Thomas More mentions the one rumour as well as the other, and treats them both lightly, as they deserved. It is also thought incredible by Mr. Carte, that Dr. Shaw should have been encouraged by Richard to calumniate openly his mother, the dutchess of York, with whom that prince lived in good terms. But if there be any difficulty in this supposition, we need only suppose, that Dr. Shaw might have concerted in general his sermon with the protector or his ministers, and yet have chosen himself the particular topics, and chosen them very foolishly. This appears indeed to have been the case by the disgrace, into which he fell afterwards, and by the protector’s neglect of him. (2) If Sir Thomas’s quality of contemporary be disputed with regard to the duke of Glocester’s protectorate, it cannot possibly be disputed with regard to Perkin’s imposture: He was then a man, and had a full opportunity of knowing and examining and judging of the truth. In asserting that the duke of York was murdered by his uncle, he certainly asserts, in the most express terms, that Perkin, who personated him, was an impostor. (3) There is another great genius who has carefully treated this point of history; so great a genius as to be esteemed with justice one of the chief ornaments of the nation, and indeed one of the most sublime writers that any age or nation has produced. It is lord Bacon I mean, who has related at full length, and without the least doubt or hesitation, all the impostures of Perkin Warbeck. If it be objected, that lord Bacon was no contemporary, and that we have the same materials, as he, upon which to form our judgment; it must be remarked, that lord Bacon plainly composed his elaborate and exact history from many records and papers which are now lost, and that consequently, he is always to be cited as an original historian. It were very strange, if Mr. Carte’s opinion were just, that, among all the papers, which lord Bacon perused, he never found any reason to suspect Perkin to be the true Plantagenet. There was at that time no interest in defaming Richard III. Bacon besides is a very unbiassed historian, nowise partial to Henry: We know the detail of that prince’s oppressive government from him alone. It may only be thought, that, in summing up his character, he has laid the colours of blame more faintly than the very facts, he mentions, seem to require. Let me remark in passing, as a singularity, how much English history has been beholden to four great men, who have possessed the highest dignity in the law, More, Bacon, Clarendon, and Whitlocke. (4) But if contemporary evidence be so much sought after, there may in this case be produced the strongest and most undeniable in the world. The queen-dowager, her son the marquis of Dorset, a man of excellent understanding, Sir Edward Woodville, her brother, Sir Thomas St.
Leger, who had married the king’s sister, Sir John Bourchier, Sir Robert Willoughby, Sir Giles Daubeney, Sir Thomas Arundel, the Courtneys, the Cheyneys, the Talbots, the Stanleys, and in a word, all the partizans of the house of York, that is, the men of chief dignity in the nation; all these great persons were so assured of the murder of the two princes, that they applied to the earl of Richmond, the mortal enemy of their party and family; they projected to set him on the throne, which must have been utter ruin to them, if the princes were alive; and they stipulated to marry him to the princess Elizabeth, as heir to the crown, who in that case was no heir at all. Had each of those persons written the memoirs of his own times, would he not have said, that Richard PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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murdered his nephews? Or would their pen be a better declaration, than their actions, of their real sentiments? (5) But we have another contemporary authority still better than even these great persons, so much interested to know the truth: It is that of Richard himself: He projected to marry his niece, a very unusual alliance in England, in order to unite her title with his own. He knew therefore her title to be good: For as to the declaration of her illegitimacy, as it went upon no proof, or even pretence of proof, it was always regarded with the utmost contempt by the nation, and was considered as one of those parliamentary transactions, so frequent in that period, which were scandalous in themselves, and had no manner of authority. It was even so much despised as not to be reversed by parliament, after Henry and Elizabeth were on the throne. (6) We have also, as contemporary evidence, the universal established opinion of the age, both abroad and at home. This point was regarded as so uncontroverted, that when Richard notified his accession to the court of France, that court was struck with horror at his abominable parricide, in murdering both his nephews, as Philip de Comines tells us; and this sentiment went to such an unusual height, that, as we learn from the same author, the court would not make the least reply to him. (7) The same reasons, which convinced that age of the parricide, still subsist, and ought to carry the most undoubted evidence to us; namely, the very circumstance of the sudden disappearance of the princes from the Tower, and their appearance no where else. Every one said,
they have not escaped from their uncle, for
he makes no search after them: He has not conveyed them elsewhere: For it is his
business to declare so, in order to remove the imputation of murder from himself. He
never would needlessly subject himself to the infamy and danger of being esteemed a
parricide, without acquiring the security attending that crime. They were in his
custody: He is answerable for them: lf he gives no account of them, as he has a plain
interest in their death, he must, by every rule of common sense, be regarded as the
murderer. His flagrant usurpation, as well as his other treacherous and cruel actions,
makes no better be expected from him. He could not say with Cain, that he was not his
nephew’s keeper.
This reasoning, which was irrefragable at the very first, became every day stronger, from Richard’s continued silence, and the general and total ignorance of the place of these princes’ abode. Richard’s reign lasted about two years beyond this period; and surely, he could not have found a better expedient for disappointing the earl of Richmond’s projects, as well as justifying his own character, than the producing of his nephews. (8) If it were necessary, amidst this blaze of evidence, to produce proofs, which, in any other case, would have been regarded as considerable, and would have carried great validity with them, I might mention Dighton and Tyrrel’s account of the murder. This last gentleman especially was not likely to subject himself to the reproach of so great a crime, by an imposture, which, it appears, did not acquire him the favour of Henry. (9) The duke of York, being a boy of nine years of age, could not have made his escape without the assistance of some elder persons. Would it not have been their chief concern instantly to convey intelligence of so great an event to his mother, the queen-dowager, to his aunt, the dutchess of Burgundy, and to the other friends of the family? The dutchess protected Simnel; a project, which, had it been successful, must have ended in the crowning of Warwic, and the exclusion of the duke of York! This, among many other proofs, evinces that she was ignorant of the escape of that prince, which is impossible, had it been real. (10) The total silence with regard to the persons who aided him in his escape, as also with regard to the place of his abode during more than eight years, is a PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)