0307C

The best way to reap the benefits of continental learning was to travel. Englishmen studying in Italy in 1500 included Richard Pace, future secretary to Henry VIII, Thomas Linacre, future founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and Cuthbert Tunstall, future Master of the Rolls, bishop of Durham and author of the best-selling maths textbook De Arte Supputandi (1522). British artists travelled less than scholars and the results were evident in the comparative insularity of artistic style. Perpendicular church architecture flourished without much reference to the classicism spreading from Italy, and until the mid-sixteenth century Italian materials such as terracotta and motifs such as putti, 'antique heads' and acanthus leaves were applied superficially to traditional courtyard houses without any sense of anachronism. When rulers wanted works that would look sophisticated to continental eyes they had to bring in foreign artists prepared to cross the Channel. Those who came, above all Pietro Torrigiano and Hans Holbein, were riot negligible talents, but it was still hard for Henry VIII to keep up with the French and Netherlandish courts as he felt he should. English music, in contrast, while no longer at the leading edge of European innovation, did produce native composers of lasting reputation, John Taverner in the 1520s leading on to the Elizabethans Tallis, Gibbons and Byrd. Scotland too had strong musical traditions and buildings erected by master-masons from the Netherlands and France.

What the English were good at, Continentals thought, was killing their kings. Five depositions, two murders and a death in battle between 1461 and 1485 suggested to some an instability that went beyond the incompetence of individual monarchs. Among the ministers of Henry VII, many of them common lawyers of comparatively humble origins, remedies were sought in increasing the financial strength of the crown, its power to do effective justice and its ability to intervene in local affairs with or without the support of the great nobility. The King's character fitted such a programme well: suspicious, concerned with detail, prepared to be thought avaricious, though it was probably the power and security that wealth brought that comforted him rather than the wealth itself. Henry used debt as a tool of political management, wishing to have 'many persons in his danger at his pleasure'. Great men who were loyal, like the earls of Oxford and Shrewsbury or the duke of Bedford, he trusted, but he was also prepared to make those he trusted great, men like his mother's financial agent Reynold Bray or the ruthless lawyer Edmund Dudley. The result was often disruption in local politics and disaffection among those who felt Henry ruled with too heavy a hand. Yet in the crises of the reign, facing the pretenders Lambert Simnel in 1487 and Perkin Warbeck in 1497, securing the Tudor succession in 1509, Henry and his lieutenants amassed enough support to survive, preparing the strength of the later Tudor monarchy.
In Ireland such aggressive kingship was less feasible. After the Gaelic revival of the past two centuries the boundaries between Gaelic and Anglo-lrish areas had stabilised, leaving most of the island beyond royal control. The influence of the English crown could be temporarily increased by expensive military interventions like that of Sir Edward Poynings in 1494-95, the source of Poynings' Law which subjected Irish parliamentary legislation to English veto. But most of the time Henry had to rely on the Fitzgerald earls of Kildare to maintain order in the English Pale and defence against the Gaelic lords by their private power among the Anglo-lrish and their private deals with Gaelic neighbours. Only when the Fitzgeralds rebelled in 1534 would English policy turn to schemes for more drastic remodelling of Irish politics and society.

In Wales military conquest and cultural conflict were heading towards a more peaceful resolution. Henry Tudor, hailed by some Welsh poets as a native deliverer from Saxon tyranny, bringer of 'the long foretold triumph of the red dragon over the white', found room at his court for loyal Welshmen and gave his son Prince Arthur a strong council to supervise the fragmented government of Wales and the Marches. He collected large sums of money from the Welsh as from all his subjects, but he gave substantive benefits in return, issuing charters removing the civil disabilities imposed in the wake of Owain Glyndwr's rebellion. These also allowed the Welsh gentry to hold land by English land law, a much preferable arrangement to those who wished to build up hereditary estates. Thus local leaders like Sir Rhys ap Thomas of Dinefwr or the Gruffydds of Penrhyn were drawn into an easier relationship with royal authority than that of the Anglo-lrish peers, let alone the Gaelic lords of Ireland, and the basis was laid for the Acts of Union 1536-43. The Highlands and Islands posed similar challenges for the kings of Scots. They too asserted themselves with occasional military forays: James IV toured the Isles in force three times in 1493-95. They were heavily dependent on noblemen able to exercise power across the cultural divide between Lowland and Gaelic worlds: the Campbells in the West, the Gordons in the North. Yet such dependence was less out of the ordinary for them than for the English. Throughout the kingdom the nobility, bolstered by strong kin-groups, hereditary offices and a low rate of attrition in Scotland's briefer and less frequent civil strife, ruled the localities far more securely than their counterparts south of the border. The comparative weakness of the fiscal and judicial organs of the state may have frustrated James IV, who wanted money for an impressive court, a modern artillery train and a navy of large, heavily-gunned ships. Yet it was probably a comfort to his subjects, who did not need to rebel against over-taxation as Henry VII's did in 1489, 1492 and 1497.

Henry's first wars sprang from an English engagement in French politics lessened, but not ended, by the loss of Normandy and Gascony in 1450-53. His son would revive such war on a larger scale, though with little result. The war of 1497 came in response to James IV's own quest for military glory. By 1500 Henry and James were at peace, awaiting the wedding in 1503 of James to Henry's daughter Margaret that would unite their dynasties. The peace it brought was short-lived: James would meet his death at Flodden invading England in 1513. Yet at length, after a century of wars and Reformations, this was the alliance that would bring the Stewarts to the English throne and unite the crowns of Britain. ENDS