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[article]- Henry VII foreign policy and stability?

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  Quote Aster Thrax Eupator Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: [article]- Henry VII foreign policy and stability?
    Posted: 30-Jul-2008 at 01:30
Again another article on something other than ancient history from me - it's a little more in-depth than my Luther article in the early modern history section.
 
 
The view that Henry VII mainly achieved internal stability through foreign policy is in many respects, true. The fluctuating nature of European politics and the heavy involvement that English factions had with states nearby such as France, Brittany and Burgundy in the wars of the roses (1451-1485/87) meant that it could no longer afford to be isolated; even as a supposedly unified nation. Two of the major factors that influenced Henry VII’s internal security from foreign policy were mainly those of a commercial and military nature.

 

It had been seen from the beginning of Henry VII’s reign and earlier reigns such as that of Edward IV and Henry VI that northern French states could very easily be used as springboards for potential invasion. Until 1506, Henry VII was constantly negotiating with the northern French states and the low countries or threatening them in an attempt to hold off their potential support for pretenders – prominent examples being Perkin Warbeck and Edmund De La Pole “the white rose”, Earl of Suffolk. All of the major English treaties also included some kind of clause that the other country in question should not support pretenders to the English throne. Prime examples of this are the 1489 treaty of Medina Del Campo and the 1492 treaty of Etaples; both contributed in other ways as well – Medina Del Campo also meant that the Spaniards were obliged to help Henry VII regain the conquests of Henry V in some areas, and Etaples secured Henry VII a massive pension from the French king. The recognition that Henry VII managed to secure in Europe by c.1500 was an incredibly large contribution to his national security, because now fellow European monarchs viewed him as being the head of a state which was no longer embroiled in civil war, and it was clear by the capture of Perkin Warbeck in 1499 and the retrieval of the “White rose” in 1506 that England was no longer the fragmented nation that it had once been. Henry VII could have taken the peaceful option and broken the treaty of Redon – signed in 1489 – and leave Brittany to the mercy of France, but he still decided to invade with what little forces he had. The effects of this were that Charles VIII had to give Henry VII massive concessions because he was organising for the Italian wars which were to culminate in 1494. Similar examples include Henry VII’s refusal to return Catherine of Aragon and her dowry to Ferdinand of Aragon long after Arthur had died in 1502. This was a carefully constructed political move to exert pressure on Ferdinand – also by supporting the husband of Joanna “the mad”, Philip of Burgundy, to the throne of Castile after Isabella’s death in 1504 – because of his attempted marriage alliance with France through Germaine De Foix.

The risks of such ventures to Henry VII if he wished to seriously maintain security in England were vast, and many of them relied on chance. Henry VII clearly decided to pursue such alliances to remove pretenders from foreign powers – even as early as Lambert Simnel’s 1487 attempt to court favour with the emperor Maximilian – but in the course of doing so, he wasted a great deal of resources and could have had extremely unexpected results. For example, he squandered much of Charles VIII’s 1492 Etaples French pension on trying to pay Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire to return Perkin Warbeck to him.

 

According to Fortiscue’s political treatise written for Edward IV, the “great chain of being” could only be restored from the broken state that the civil wars had reduced it to, and Fortiscue suggested pure financial power of the king over the nobles in order to do this. However, although acts of attainder, wardships, recogninces and benevolences did do much to enhance the king’s coffers, Henry VII knew that it was really economic power of England as a whole that could secure the crown. The treaty of Utrecht in 1474, signed between Edward IV and the Hanse, gave the latter almost monopolistic rights over all English trading. In the wars of the roses, it was necessary for kings such as Edward IV to secure foreign support by such means, but when England was secured under Henry VII, the nearly half a century of such concessions was beginning to cause serious issues in the English economy. Problems such as enclosure were widespread, and it was mainly due to foreign policy and the loss of the English monopoly of the wool trade that caused such issues. We can see that, in the example of enclosure, Henry VII’s attempts to pass acts against it in 1489 failed to do much, and the problem was only significantly rectified when English trade began to flourish again in the 1496 Magnus Intercursus and the 1506 Malus Intercursus. Moreover, the risk of rebellion from areas such as Cornwall in 1497 and the 1489 rebellion in Yorkshire was mainly due to economic factors – namely perceived over taxation. Had Henry VII the monopoly that states such as Spain, France, Venice, the Hanse and others had, they might have had less chance of occurring, and from this perspective, it is of no surprise that Henry VII decided that one of his first acts would be the rejection of Hanse trading privileges, as shown in the 1485-86 navigation acts. These also dictated that merchants should only use ships of a certain weight so that they could easily be transformed into fighting vessels in a time of war. The threat of foreign invasion from such pretenders also prompted the construction of Europe’s first dry dock, it’s first permanent naval base at Portsmouth and one of the most powerful ships in Europe – the “regent”.

 

However, Henry VII’s attempt to increase English commercial power was very much a double edged sword, and all the 1506 Malus Intercursus did was to anger Burgundy, the tariff against Flanders to ruin the English economy, and the navigation acts to anger the Hanse; all of whom could easily have supported the “white rose” had they wished. Henry VII’s attempts to reverse this climate by the ill-fated 1499 treaty of Riga was only met by the 1491 Antwerp conference, where the Hanseatic league officially declared England a threat. Henry VII’s luck in creating a powerful trading agreement with Florence in 1490 can be considered luck merely because Venice was preoccupied by the outbreak of the 1494 Italian wars – otherwise it might have taken the direction of the events in the north between England and the Hanse. However, despite these economic shortcomings, it cannot be denied that Henry VII at the end of his reign had secured significantly more capital via trading than had been achieved by previous kings in the wars of the roses. Many of the acts of exploration that England tried to fund were not intrinsically linked to internal security, and in the 1497 voyage, Henry VII only gave John Cabot £50 to fund his expedition, and earlier, rejected the offer to Patron Christopher Columbus. Although these voyages were impressive, and Henry VII has widely been called the second best patron of voyages after Ferdinand and Isabella, even the later voyages such as that of Sebastian Cabot in 1509 ended in having to turn back or disaster. These voyages were not intrinsically linked to internal security, but rather helped Henry gain prestige abroad.

 

The internal actions that Henry VII took to provide internal security were also incredibly incisive, but later in his reign, as he achieved recognition from other European rulers, foreign policy arguably took more and more of a prominent position. The “great council”, “court of the kings’ bench”, “justices of the peace” and centralised controlling government such as the “council of Wales and the marches” and the “council of the north” were all established roughly before 1500, when the 1504 onwards Castilian succession crisis preoccupied Henry VII. Such organisations did aid internal security greatly, but without the recognition of Henry VII as the sole ruler of England, his internal position would have been tenuous to say the least. For example, the recognition of Maximilian of the Holy Roman empire was a key factor in the Perkin Warbeck struggle – if one of the most powerful rulers in Europe recognised Warbeck as Richard IV then arguably Henry VII’s position would have been extremely dire. Foreign policy can be considered more of a challenge to Henry VII than internal security – even monarchs such as Henry VI and Edward IV who were controlled to some extent by Warwick “the kingmaker” and other magnates had some control over their country; just because of the office of king and the patronage that they could bestow. However, none of these monarchs had any control whatsoever over foreign intervention and pressure to any large extent, and it was only through chance and the meticulousness of Henry VII that figures such as Ferdinand of Aragon, Philip of Burgundy and Charles VIII could be coerced into doing his will. Fundamentally, Henry VII’s reign can be seen to be so successful because of his financial power over the nobility – and naturally trade and foreign pensions were one of the main ways of securing this.

 



Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 30-Jul-2008 at 01:31
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  Quote rider Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jul-2008 at 11:54

Aaarrgghhh.. The FONT~~ It's terrible... 

The content deserves mention though. 

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