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87 from Puebla that the Spanish marriage would be expedited by CHAP. Warwick's death. If this be so, Bacon is right in saying that "a kind of malediction" rested on the marriage. Long afterwards, when the Spanish girl, whose destiny was so strangely mingled with English history, had grown to middle age and had begun to taste the bitterness of repudiation, she is reputed to have said that "she had not offended, but it was a judgment of God, for that her former marriage was made in blood".1

The last prince of the Yorkist house had fallen, and Puebla wrote off to Spain in glee that England had never been so tranquil and obedient. The arrangements for the marriage were pushed on, and it was expected that the princess would land in the course of the summer of 1500. But even yet side winds came to perplex and ruffle the course of the negotiations. The king's council haggled over the treaty of alliance, wishing to pledge Spain to help England towards the recovery of its French possessions, and but for the king's intervention the treaty would not have been concluded. In May Henry and his queen passed over to Calais to meet the Archduke Philip, and negotiations were opened at St. Omer to define the political issues which were to be the subject of arrangement at the personal interview. There were many substantial reasons why Philip and Henry should make their peace. The Great Intercourse had laid down the general principles of commercial agreement between England and Flanders, but many minor occasions of friction had arisen since it was concluded. The ambitions of Louis XII., who in the previous year had conquered the Duchy of Milan, were viewed with some alarm by the son of Maximilian; and on Henry's side the friendship of Flanders, securing as it might be made to do the extradition of rebels, was always valuable. The conference held in St. Peter's Church on June 9 was both political and commercial. Marriages were projected between Henry, Duke of York, the king's second son, and Margaret, the daughter of the archduke, and again between Charles, the archduke's eldest son, and Mary, the second daughter of the King of England, and a commercial settlement was arrived at. There was enough in the situation to illumine the watchful lamps of Spanish jealousy, and a special envoy, Fuenzalida, Knight Commander of Haro, was sent over to England to 1 Bacon, History of King Henry VII., p. 179,

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CHAP. ascertain whether the hand of Arthur had been surreptitiously pledged away. The rumour proved to be unfounded. Fuenzalida learnt that the English were eager for the arrival of Catharine, and that great preparations had been made for her reception. The Spanish court was reassured; efforts were made to create a Spanish party among the English nobility, and the princess was promised for the ensuing year. It was specially requested that her retinue of ladies should be of gentle birth and beautiful, "or at least that none of them should be ugly".

In the suite which followed the king and queen to Calais there were two persons whose attendance might serve to exhibit the euthanasia of disloyalty, the Lady Catharine Gordon and the Earl of Suffolk. Edmund de la Pole, second son of John Duke of Suffolk, by Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV., was the brother and the heir of that Earl of Lincoln who had fallen at Stoke. He had succeeded to a diminished inheritance, and finding his fortune insufficient to support the dignity of duke, had entered into an indenture with the king, by which he agreed to renounce his father's title and to be known in future as the Earl of Suffolk. This document, dated February 26, 1493, was two years later enrolled as an act of parliament. An enumeration was then made of the duke's lands which were retained by the king, and the earl's lands which were restored to Suffolk; and from this it would appear that the larger part of the Suffolk inheritance was permitted to pass to Edmund de la Pole. Half measures are proverbially dangerous, and Suffolk, a hot-tempered and ambitious youth, fretted under a sense of injury. The owner of forty-six manors longed for his lost acres, his lost dukedom. Condemned to pay a heavy fine of £5,000 for the lands restored to him, he was forced to mortgage a part of his estate; and to these pecuniary losses was added a slur upon his status as a peer. In 1498, he was indicted for manslaughter in the court of king's bench, and though the prosecution was dropped, the sense of indignity remained. Suffolk fled over the sea on July 1, 1499, and after staying with Sir James Tyrrell, governor of Guisnes, passed into Flanders. To quit the country without the king's permission was in itself an offence in an English subject, and the circumstances of Suffolk's flight savoured of treason. Sir George Neville, "the Bastard," his hair whitened by an Odyssey of

1501

MARRIAGE OF ARTHUR AND CATHARINE.

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treason, was lurking on the continent with a knot of needy and CHAP. restless exiles, and the appearance of a man of Suffolk's rank and pretensions south of the Channel would be the signal for a general rally of the broken fragments of the Yorkist cause. The king sent messengers to represent to Suffolk the desperate folly of his courses, and to induce him, and, if possible, Sir James Tyrrell as well, to return to England. In the case of Suffolk these solicitations were successful, and that ill-balanced but popular descendant of Geoffrey Chaucer again figured at the court.1

The voyage of the infanta had been delayed first by a Moorish insurrection, then by illness, and finally by a hurricane; and it was not until the afternoon of October 2, 1501, that Catharine sailed into Plymouth Hoe and set foot for the first time on English soil. As soon as the intelligence was received, the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood rode in to do her honour. The enthusiasm was genuine, and the welcome unchilled by long postponement. "She could not," wrote one of her attendants, "have been received with greater rejoicings if she had been the Saviour of the world." On November 15 she was married to Prince Arthur in St. Paul's cathedral. The capital, which for months had been looking forward to this event, surrendered itself to festivity. Jousts and masques, banquets and games continued steadily for a space of ten days. Westminster Hall, draped with costly arras, was given over to mummery and dancing. Lists were made in Palace Yard, where the nobility might tilt under the eyes of the royal family and the city fathers. Mock mermaids and mountains, bowls and archery, "courtly roundes and pleasant dances,” a Spanish tumbler showing "many wondrous and delicious points of tumbling, dancing, and other sleights"; "a child of the Chapel singing right sweetly with quaint harmony": such were the amusements of Henry's court. No one could say that the arrival of the foreign princess had not been saluted with due honour.

All through this period of festivity the king's peace of mind must have been vexed by a new source of anxiety. While Catharine's litter was travelling towards Corunna, the Earl of Suffolk escaped for the second time to the continent, accompanied on this occasion by his brother Richard. Unversed

1 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, N.S., xvi., 133-35 ; xviii., 157 ff,

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CHAP. in high politics, but well-connected and possessed of considerable influence in the eastern counties, Suffolk seems to have believed that if he could obtain foreign aid he could overturn Henry's throne. In this delusion he was encouraged by some intelligence from the court of Maximilian. Two years before Sir Robert Curzon, the governor of the fortress of Hamme in the Marches of Calais, had obtained leave to fight in the Turkish wars under the banner of Maximilian. Curzon was one of those who felt a lively sympathy for the victims of Henry's policy. He spoke to the King of the Romans of "the murders and tyrannies" practised by the King of England, and of my lord of Suffolk's purpose to recover his right; and Maximilian, who was not a man of accurate measures, let fall some words which encouraged Suffolk to repair to his court. The possession of a genuine pretendant to the English throne was always a useful asset to a foreign prince. Suffolk received fair promises of men and money, and was recommended to take up his station at Aix-la-Chapelle. But meanwhile Maximilian, so far froin being in a position to draw the sword in his behalf, was actually engaged in negotiations with England, for he was desirous of obtaining from the deep pocket of Henry VII. an advance of 50,000 crowns for his Turkish war.

The eastern problem had risen into fresh prominence owing to the sudden outbreak of hostilities between the Porte and Venice in 1499. The Turks defeated the Venetian navy, took Lepanto, raided through Carniola and Friuli, and then set themselves to drive the Venetians from the Morea. A thrill of alarm passed through the world of Latin Christianity. If the crescent should wave over Venice herself, would not Rome be the next victim? Pope Alexander VI. was an able man of affairs, but unfortunately the affairs which he was at this time chiefly bent on forwarding were those of his son Cesare Borgia, and though some of the jubilee funds were transmitted to Venice, the greater portion was devoted to the promotion of Cesare's fortunes. At the end of 1501 a papal envoy, by name Gaspar Pons, appeared in England partly to sell indulgences to persons who had been unable to make the jubilee pilgrimage to Rome, and partly to urge the king to lead a crusade against the Moslem. Henry permitted the collection to be made and himself contributed a sum of £4,000.

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The province of Canterbury voted £12,000, that of York a CHAP. tenth of clerical revenue towards the holy war. But to the request that he should conduct a crusade in person, Henry replied in language of grave irony. He would deeply regret a Turkish invasion of Italy. For his part he was at peace with all Christian princes. Considerations of space forbade his assisting in the praiseworthy design, for even the Venetian galleys required seven months for their passage to England. The Germans and Hungarians, the Bohemians and the Poles, being nearer the scene of action and acquainted with Turkish methods of warfare, were those upon whom the defence properly devolved. A small subsidy was, however, sent, not without precautions and delays, to the King of Hungary.

The method of dealing with a situation such as that which was now created by Suffolk's reception at the Imperial Court was by this time thoroughly established. Information was collected from spies, a handful of prominent suspects was arrested and imprisoned, fugitive adherents of the traitor were tempted from their allegiance by bribes, and while localities favourable to his cause were accurately watched, all the diplomatic batteries were brought to bear. Four months before Suffolk's second flight Henry had issued pardons to Sir George Neville and thirteen other refugees in the hope of tempting them back to their allegiance. The device had failed; the men declined Henry's offer to remit fines and grant an amnesty, and when Suffolk set foot on the continent they clustered round him. But it was in Henry's power to strike a crushing blow at the conspiracy; and not long after Suffolk's flight had been ascertained, his most prominent relatives and friends, William de la Pole his brother, Lord William Courtenay, son of the Earl of Devon, his cousin by marriage, Sir John Wyndham, and Sir James Tyrrell were placed under lock and key. De la Pole and Courtenay remained prisoners during the remainder of Henry's reign; Tyrrell and Wyndham, and a few persons of minor importance, suffered on the scaffold. That the conspiracy was promptly suppressed may be inferred from the fact that only sixteen persons were attainted in connexion with it. Some of them were squires from Norfolk and Suffolk, two were Hampshire yeomen, one was a mariner from Beaulieu, and one a clerk from London. The spirit of disaffection seems to have been