the laws, but we are to be condemned for putting them in execution, though our offices made it imperative upon us, and we were bound by the express commands of the sovereign, to whom the execution of the law is committed by the constitution. If we are to be sacrificed to the clamours of those whom our duty has obliged us to punish, I entreat that the cause of our suffering may be kept a profound secret; for, otherwise, if it become known in "foreign countries, it will be concluded that all law and government are at an end in England."
The matter was so palpable, that the council having remanded the prisoners, concluded to shift the ground of accusation, and to try them on a charge of which they were as innocent as they were really guilty on the true ground of accusation. They were now indicted for high treason, and it was alleged that they had in March last, when the late king lay on his death-bed, summoned their friends to be ready in arms to march to London, and to seize the person of the young king, either for the purpose of continuing through that means their unrighteous rule, or of putting him to death. On so flimsy and improbable a ground were these two arch-knaves accused, and witnesses were in readiness to swear all this. Dudley was tried at the Guildhall, in London, on the 16th of July; and Empson at Northampton, on the 1st of October. Both were found guilty and committed to the Tower, where they lay for upwards of ten months, and then were beheaded on the 18th of August, 1510. Though they were not condemned for the crimes they had really done, it was enough for the people that they were punished for them. It was on that account and no other that they died.
To make the satisfaction complete, Henry summoned a Parliament, in which the chief topic was the prevention in future of such abominable exactions, and the obsolete penal statutes on which these men had acted were formally repealed. The whole number of temporal peers who were summoned to this Parliament was only thirty-six—one duke, one marquis, eight earls, and twenty-six barons.
Henry was now at peace with all the world. At home and abroad, so far as he was concerned, all was tranquillity. No English monarch had ever been more popular, powerful, and prosperous. Nothing could show more the advance which England had made of late in strength and importance than the deference paid to Henry by the greatest princes on the Continent, and their anxiety to cultivate his alliance. The balance of power in Europe appeared more widely established than at any former period. England had freed herself of her intestine divisions, and stood compact and vigorous from united political power and the active spirit of commerce. The people were thriving; the crown, owing to the cares of Henry VII., was rich. Spain had united its several provinces into one potent state, which was ruled by the crafty but able Ferdinand. France had done the same work of consolidation under Louis XII., by his marriage with Anne of Brittany, and the incorporation of her duchy. Maximilian, the Emperor of Germany, with his hereditary dominions of Austria, possessed the weight given him by his imperial office over all Germany; and his son Charles, heir at once of Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands, was at this time the ruler of Burgundy and the Netherlands, under the guardianship of his aunt, Margaret of Savoy, a princess of high character for sense and virtue. Henry had taken the earliest opportunity of renewing the treaties made by his father with all these princes, and with Scotland; and declared that he was resolved to maintain peace with them, and to cultivate the interests of his subjects at home.
How great and glorious a monarch would he have been had he possessed the wisdom to persist in this idea! By holding himself free from any partisanship on the Continent, he was in a position to act as arbiter betwixt his contending neighbours, and might have assumed a more influential and beneficent position than any other prince—a position as illustrious to himself as advantageous to his country. But Henry, though for some years he was leading a life of pleasure and gaiety at home, was charged with every egotistic principle which disturbs the rest of princes and nations. His personal vanity was enormous. In all the endless series of revelries, pageants, balls, and maskings which filled the court for a couple of years, he was the great object of attraction; they were his accomplishments which were to be displayed. The queen and her ladies, the foreign ambassadors and the distinguished nobility, were often called upon to witness his feats of arms, his contests at the barriers with the battle-axe, or the two-handed sword; and he was proclaimed invincible on such occasions—for who would presume to defeat the king? It was soon suggested by his flatterers that the same prowess carried into a more glorious field would speedily renew all the renown of Creçy and Azincourt. The delicious poison of adulation fell sweetly on the proud mind of Henry; and by the acts of those whose interests were to fish in troubled waters, he was soon involved in a long career of wars and Continental entanglements. The life of Henry may indeed be divided into three eras—the first and shortest, that of mere pleasure and vanity; the second, of martial contest; and the third, a dark and ever-deepening descent into tyranny and bloodshed, in which he was busily at work deposing and decapitating queens and ministers. In his youth, like a tiger not yet fully grown, he was sportive but rather dangerous; in his manhood, like the tiger having tasted blood, he was become terrible, for his playfulness had disappeared; and in his age, having long accustomed himself to strike down and devour all that approached him, he was vindictive, ferocious, and sanguinary almost beyond example.
The first means of exciting him to mingle in the distraction of the Continent were found in the fact that Louis XII. of France was reluctant to continue the annual payment of £80,000 which he made to his father. Henry had made a considerable vacuum in the treasury chests of his father, and was not willing to forego this convenient subsidy. There were those on the watch ready to stimulate him to hostile action. Pope Julius II., and Ferdinand of Spain, had their own reasons for fomenting ill-will betwixt Louis of France and Henry. Louis had added Milan, and part of the north of Italy, to the French crown. Ferdinand had become possessed of Naples and Sicily, first, by aiding the French in conquering them, and then by driving out the French. Pope Julius was equally averse to the presence of the French and Spaniards in Italy, but he was, at the same
