Chapter 8

(J. Ga.)

HENRY VIII.(1491-1547), king of England and Ireland, the third child and second son of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, was born on the 28th of June 1491 and, like all the Tudor sovereigns except Henry VII., at Greenwich. His two brothers, Prince Arthur and Edmund, duke of Somerset, and two of his sisters predeceased their father; Henry was the only son, and Margaret, afterwards queen of Scotland, and Mary, afterwards queen of France and duchess of Suffolk, were the only daughters who survived. Henry is said, on authority which has not been traced farther back than Paolo Sarpi, to have been destined for the church; but the story is probably a mere surmise from his theological accomplishments, and from his earliest years high secular posts such as the viceroyalty of Ireland were conferred upon the child. He was the first English monarch to be educated under the influence of the Renaissance, and his tutors included the poet Skelton; he became an accomplished scholar, linguist, musician and athlete, and when by the death of his brother Arthur in 1502 and of his father on the 22nd of April 1509 Henry VIII. succeeded to the throne, his accession was hailed with universal acclamation.

He had been betrothed to his brother’s widow Catherine of Aragon, and in spite of the protest which he had been made to register against the marriage, and of the doubts expressed by Julius II. and Archbishop Warham as to its validity, it wascompleted in the first few months of his reign. This step was largely due to the pressure brought to bear by Catherine’s father Ferdinand upon Henry’s council; he regarded England as a tool in his hands and Catherine as his resident ambassador. The young king himself at first took little interest in politics, and for two years affairs were managed by the pacific Richard Fox (q.v.) and Warham. Then Wolsey became supreme, while Henry was immersed in the pursuit of sport and other amusements. He took, however, the keenest interest from the first in learning and in the navy, and his inborn pride easily led him to support Wolsey’s and Ferdinand’s warlike designs on France. He followed an English army across the Channel in 1513, and personally took part in the successful sieges of Therouanne and Tournay and the battle of Guinegate which led to the peace of 1514. Ferdinand, however, deserted the English alliance, and amid the consequent irritation against everything Spanish, there was talk of a divorce between Henry and Catherine (1514), whose issue had hitherto been attended with fatal misfortune. But the renewed antagonism between England and France which followed the accession of Francis I. (1515) led to a rapprochement with Ferdinand; the birth of the lady Mary (1516) held out hopes of the male issue which Henry so much desired; and the question of a divorce was postponed. Ferdinand died in that year (1516) and the emperor Maximilian in 1519. Their grandson Charles V. succeeded them both in all their realms and dignities in spite of Henry’s hardly serious candidature for the empire; and a lifelong rivalry broke out between him and Francis I. Wolsey used this antagonism to make England arbiter between them; and both monarchs sought England’s favour in 1520, Francis at the Field of Cloth of Gold and Charles V. more quietly in Kent. At the conference of Calais in 1521 English influence reached its zenith; but the alliance with Charles destroyed the balance on which that influence depended. Francis was overweighted, and his defeat at Pavia in 1525 made the emperor supreme. Feeble efforts to challenge his power in Italy provoked the sack of Rome in 1527; and the peace of Cambrai in 1529 was made without any reference to Wolsey or England’s interests.

Meanwhile Henry had been developing a serious interest in politics, and he could brook no superior in whatever sphere he wished to shine. He began to adopt a more critical attitude towards Wolsey’s policy, foreign and domestic; and to give ear to the murmurs against the cardinal and his ecclesiastical rule. Parliament had been kept at arm’s length since 1515 lest it should attack the church; but Wolsey’s expensive foreign policy rendered recourse to parliamentary subsidies indispensable. When it met in 1523 it refused Wolsey’s demands, and forced loans were the result which increased the cardinal’s unpopularity. Nor did success abroad now blunt the edge of domestic discontent. His fate, however, was sealed by his failure to obtain a divorce for Henry from the papal court. The king’s hopes of male issue had been disappointed, and by 1526 it was fairly certain that Henry could have no male heir to the throne while Catherine remained his wife. There was Mary, but no queen regnant had yet ruled in England; Margaret Beaufort had been passed over in favour of her son in 1485, and there was a popular impression that women were excluded from the throne. No candidate living could have secured the succession without a recurrence of civil war. Moreover the unexampled fatality which had attended Henry’s issue revived the theological scruples which had always existed about the marriage; and the breach with Charles V. in 1527 provoked a renewal of the design of 1514. All these considerations were magnified by Henry’s passion for Anne Boleyn, though she certainly was not the sole or the main cause of the divorce. That the succession was the main point is proved by the fact that Henry’s efforts were all directed to securing a wife and not a mistress. Wolsey persuaded him that the necessary divorce could be obtained from Rome, as it had been in the case of Louis XII. of France and Margaret of Scotland. For a time Clement VII. was inclined to concede the demand, and Campeggio in 1528 was given ample powers. But the prospect of French success in Italy which had encouraged the pope proved delusive, and in 1529 he had to submit to the yoke of Charles V. This involved a rejection of Henry’s suit, not because Charles cared anything for his aunt, but because a divorce would mean disinheriting Charles’s cousin Mary, and perhaps the eventual succession of the son of a French princess to the English throne.

Wolsey fell when Campeggio was recalled, and his fall involved the triumph of the anti-ecclesiastical party in England. Laymen who had resented their exclusion from power were now promoted to offices such as those of lord chancellor and lord privy seal which they had rarely held before; and parliament was encouraged to propound lay grievances against the church. On the support of the laity Henry relied to abolish papal jurisdiction and reduce clerical privilege and property in England; and by a close alliance with Francis I. he insured himself against the enmity of Charles V. But it was only gradually that the breach was completed with Rome. Henry had defended the papacy against Luther in 1521 and had received in return the title “defender of the faith.” He never liked Protestantism, and he was prepared for peace with Rome on his own terms. Those terms were impossible of acceptance by a pope in Clement VII.’s position; but before Clement had made up his mind to reject them, Henry had discovered that the papacy was hardly worth conciliating. His eyes were opened to the extent of his own power as the exponent of national antipathy to papal jurisdiction and ecclesiastical privilege; and his appetite for power grew. With Cromwell’s help he secured parliamentary support, and its usefulness led him to extend parliamentary representation to Wales and Calais, to defend the privileges of Parliament, and to yield rather than forfeit its confidence. He had little difficulty in securing the Acts of Annates, Appeals and Supremacy which completed the separation from Rome, or the dissolution of the monasteries which, by transferring enormous wealth from the church to the crown, really, in Cecil’s opinion, ensured the reformation.

The abolition of the papal jurisdiction removed all obstacles to the divorce from Catherine and to the legalization of Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn (1533). But the recognition of the royal supremacy could only be enforced at the cost of the heads of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher and a number of monks and others among whom the Carthusians signalized themselves by their devotion (1535-1536). Anne Boleyn fared no better than the Catholic martyrs; she failed to produce a male heir to the throne, and her conduct afforded a jury of peers, over which her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided, sufficient excuse for condemning her to death on a charge of adultery (1536). Henry then married Jane Seymour, who was obnoxious to no one, gave birth to Edward VI., and then died (1537). The dissolution of the monasteries had meanwhile evoked a popular protest in the north, and it was only by skilful and unscrupulous diplomacy that Henry was enabled to suppress so easily the Pilgrimage of Grace. Foreign intervention was avoided through the renewal of war between Francis and Charles; and the insurgents were hampered by having no rival candidate for the throne and no means of securing the execution of their programme.

Nevertheless their rising warned Henry against further doctrinal change. He had authorized the English Bible and some approach towards Protestant doctrine in the Ten Articles. He also considered the possibility of a political and theological alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany. But in 1538 he definitely rejected their theological terms, while in 1539-1540 they rejected his political proposals. By the statute of Six Articles (1539) he took his stand on Catholic doctrine; and when the Lutherans had rejected his alliance, and Cromwell’s nominee, Anne of Cleves, had proved both distasteful on personal grounds and unnecessary because Charles and Francis were not really projecting a Catholic crusade against England, Anne was divorced and Cromwell beheaded. The new queen Catherine Howard represented the triumph of the reactionary party under Gardiner and Norfolk; but there was no idea of returning to the papal obedience, and even Catholic orthodoxy as representedby the Six Articles was only enforced by spasmodic outbursts of persecution and vain attempts to get rid of Cranmer.

The secular importance of Henry’s activity has been somewhat obscured by his achievements in the sphere of ecclesiastical politics; but no small part of his energies was devoted to the task of expanding the royal authority at the expense of temporal competitors. Feudalism was not yet dead, and in the north and west there were medieval franchises in which the royal writ and common law hardly ran at all. Wales and its marches were brought into legal union with the rest of England by the statutes of Wales (1534-1536); and after the Pilgrimage of Grace the Council of the North was set up to bring into subjection the extensive jurisdictions of the northern earls. Neither they nor the lesser chiefs who flourished on the lack of common law and order could be reduced by ordinary methods, and the Councils of Wales and of the North were given summary powers derived from the Roman civil lawsimilarto those exercised by the Star Chamber at Westminster and the court of Castle Chamber at Dublin. Ireland had been left by Wolsey to wallow in its own disorder; but disorder was anathema to Henry’s mind, and in 1535 Sir William Skeffington was sent to apply English methods and artillery to the government of Ireland. Sir Anthony St Leger continued his policy from 1540; Henry, instead of being merely lord of Ireland dependent on the pope, was made by an Irish act of parliament king, and supreme head of the Irish church. Conciliation was also tried with some success; plantation schemes were rejected in favour of an attempt to Anglicize the Irish; their chieftains were created earls and endowed with monastic lands; and so peaceful was Ireland in 1542 that the lord-deputy could send Irish kernes and gallowglasses to fight against the Scots.

Henry, however, seems to have believed as much in the coercion of Scotland as in the conciliation of Ireland. Margaret Tudor’s marriage had not reconciled the realms; and as soon as James V. became a possible pawn in the hands of Charles V., Henry bethought himself of his old claims to suzerainty over Scotland. At first he was willing to subordinate them to an attempt to win over Scotland to his anti-papal policy, and he made various efforts to bring about an interview with his nephew. But James V. was held aloof by Beaton and two French marriages; and France was alarmed by Henry’s growing friendliness with Charles V., who was mollified by his cousin Mary’s restoration to her place in the succession to the throne. In 1542 James madly sent a Scottish army to ruin at Solway Moss; his death a few weeks later left the Scottish throne to his infant daughter Mary Stuart, and Henry set to work to secure her hand for his son Edward and the recognition of his own suzerainty. A treaty was signed with the Scottish estates; but it was torn up a few months later under the influence of Beaton and the queen-dowager Mary of Guise, and Hertford was sent in 1544 to punish this breach of promise by sacking Edinburgh.

Perhaps to prevent French intervention in Scotland Henry joined Charles V. in invading France, and captured Boulogne (Sept. 1544). But Charles left his ally in the lurch and concluded the peace of Crépy that same month; and in 1545 Henry had to face alone a French invasion of the Isle of Wight. This attack proved abortive, and peace between England and France was made in 1546. Charles V.’s desertion inclined Henry to listen to the proposals of the threatened Lutheran princes, and the last two years of his reign were marked by a renewed tendency to advance in a Protestant direction. Catherine Howard had been brought to the block (1542) on charges in which there was probably a good deal of truth, and her successor, Catherine Parr, was a patroness of the new learning. An act of 1545 dissolved chantries, colleges and other religious foundations; and in the autumn of 1546 the Spanish ambassador was anticipating further anti-ecclesiastical measures. Gardiner had almost been sent to the Tower, and Norfolk and Surrey were condemned to death, while Cranmer asserted that it was Henry’s intention to convert the mass into a communion service. An opportunist to the last, he would readily have sacrificed any theological convictions he may have had in the interests of national uniformity. He died on the 28th of January 1547, and was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

The atrocity of many of Henry’s acts, the novelty and success of his religious policy, the apparent despotism of his methods, or all combined, have made it difficult to estimate calmly the importance of Henry’s work or the conditions which made it possible. Henry’s egotism was profound, and personal motives underlay his public action. While political and ecclesiastical conditions made the breach with Rome possible—and in the view of most Englishmen desirable—Henry VIII. was led to adopt the policy by private considerations. He worked for the good of the state because he thought his interests were bound up with those of the nation; and it was the real coincidence of this private and public point of view that made it possible for so selfish a man to achieve so much for his country. The royal supremacy over the church and the means by which it was enforced were harsh and violent expedients; but it was of the highest importance that England should be saved from religious civil war, and it could only be saved by a despotic government. It was necessary for the future development of England that its governmental system should be centralized and unified, that the authority of the monarchy should be more firmly extended over Wales and the western and northern borders, and that the still existing feudal franchises should be crushed; and these objects were worth the price paid in the methods of the Star Chamber and of the Councils of the North and of Wales. Henry’s work on the navy requires no apology; without it Elizabeth’s victory over the Spanish Armada, the liberation of the Netherlands and the development of English colonies would have been impossible; and “of all others the year 1545 best marks the birth of the English naval power” (Corbett,Drake, i. 59). His judgment was more at fault when he conquered Boulogne and sought by violence to bring Scotland into union with England. But at least Henry appreciated the necessity of union within the British Isles; and his work in Ireland relaid the foundations of English rule. No less important was his development of the parliamentary system. Representation was extended to Wales, Cheshire, Berwick and Calais; and parliamentary authority was enhanced, largely that it might deal with the church, until men began to complain of this new parliamentary infallibility. The privileges of the two Houses were encouraged and expanded, and parliament was led to exercise ever wider powers. This policy was not due to any belief on Henry’s part in parliamentary government, but to opportunism, to the circumstance that parliament was willing to do most of the things which Henry desired, while competing authorities, the church and the old nobility, were not. Nevertheless, to the encouragement given by Henry VIII. parliament owed not a little of its future growth, and to the aid rendered by parliament Henry owed his success.

He has been described as a “despot under the forms of law”; and it is apparently true that he committed no illegal act. His despotism consists not in any attempt to rule unconstitutionally, but in the extraordinary degree to which he was able to use constitutional means in the furtherance of his own personal ends. His industry, his remarkable political insight, his lack of scruple, and his combined strength of will and subtlety of intellect enabled him to utilize all the forces which tended at that time towards strong government throughout western Europe. In Michelet’s words, “le nouveau Messie est le roi”; and the monarchy alone seemed capable of guiding the state through the social and political anarchy which threatened all nations in their transition from medieval to modern organization. The king was the emblem, the focus and the bond of national unity; and to preserve it men were ready to put up with vagaries which to other ages seem intolerable. Henry could thus behead ministers and divorce wives with comparative impunity, because the individual appeared to be of little importance compared with the state. This impunity provoked a licence which is responsible for the unlovely features of Henry’s reign and character. The elevation and the isolation of his position fostered a detachment from ordinary virtues and compassion,and he was a remorseless incarnation of Machiavelli’sPrince. He had an elastic conscience which was always at the beck and call of his desire, and he cared little for principle. But he had a passion for efficiency, and for the greatness of England and himself. His mind, in spite of its clinging to the outward forms of the old faith, was intensely secular; and he was as devoid of a moral sense as he was of a genuine religious temperament. His greatness consists in his practical aptitude, in his political perception, and in the self-restraint which enabled him to confine within limits tolerable to his people an insatiable appetite for power.

The original materials for Henry VIII.’s biography are practically all incorporated in the monumentalLetters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.(21 vols.), edited by Brewer and Gairdner and completed after fifty years’ labour in 1910. A few further details may be gleaned from such contemporary sources as Hall’sChronicle, Cavendish’sLife of Wolsey, W. Thomas’sThe Pilgrimand others; and some additions have been made to the documentary sources contained in theLetters and Papersby recent works, such as Ehses’Römische Dokumente, and Merriman’sLife and Letters of Thomas Cromwell. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’sLife and Reign of Henry VIII.(1649), while good for its time, is based upon a very partial knowledge of the sources and somewhat antiquated principles of historical scholarship. Froude’s famous portraiture of Henry is coloured by the ideas of hero-worship and history which the author imbibed from Carlyle, and the rival portraits in Lingard, R. W. Dixon’sChurch Historyand Gasquet’sHenry VIII. and the Monasteriesby strong religious feeling. A more discriminating estimate is attempted by H. A. L. Fisher in Messrs Longmans’Political History of England, vol. v. (1906). Of the numerous paintings of Henry none is by Holbein, who, however, executed the striking chalk-drawing of Henry’s head, now at Munich, and the famous but decaying cartoon at Devonshire House. The well-known three-quarter length at Windsor, usually attributed to Holbein, is by an inferior artist. The best collection of Henry’s portraits was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909, and the catalogue of that exhibition contains the best description of them; several are reproduced in Pollard’sHenry VIII.(Goupil) (1902), the letterpress of which was published by Longmans in a cheaper edition (1905). Henry composed numerous state papers still extant; his only book was hisAssertio septem sacramentorum contra M. Lutherum(1521), a copy of which, signed by Henry himself, is at Windsor. Several anthems composed by him are extant; and one at least,O Lord, the Maker of all Things, is still occasionally rendered in English cathedrals.

(A. F. P.)

HENRY I.(1214-1217), king of Castile, son of Alphonso VIII. of Castile, and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, daughter of Henry II. of England, after whom he was named, was born about 1207. He was killed, while still a boy, by the fall of a tile from a roof.

Henry II.of Trastamara (1369-1379), king of Castile, founder of the dynasty known as “the new kings,” was the eldest son of Alphonso XI. and of his mistress Leonora de Guzman. He was born in 1333. His father endowed him with great lordships in northern Spain, and made him count of Trastamara. After the death of Alphonso XI. in 1350, Leonora was murdered to satisfy the revenge of the king’s neglected wife. Several of the numerous children she had borne to Alphonso were slain at different times by Peter the Cruel, the king’s legitimate son and successor. Henry preserved his life by submissions and by keeping out of the king’s way. At last, after taking part in several internal commotions, he fled to France in 1356. In 1366 he persuaded the mercenary soldiers paid off by the kings of England and France to accompany him on an expedition to upset Peter, who was driven out. The Black Prince having intervened on behalf of Peter, Henry was defeated at Najera (3rd of April 1367) and had again to flee to Aragon. When the Black Prince was told that “the Bastard” had neither been slain nor taken, he said that nothing had been done. And so it turned out; for, when the Black Prince had left Spain, Henry came back with a body of French soldiers of fortune under du Guesclin, and drove his brother into the castle of Montiel in La Mancha. Peter was tempted out by du Guesclin, and the half brothers met in the Frenchman’s tent. They rushed at one another, and Peter, the stronger man, threw Henry down, and fell on him. One of Henry’s pages seized the king by the leg and threw him on his back. Henry then pulled up Peter’s hauberk and stabbed him mortally in the stomach, on the 23rd of March 1369. He reigned for ten years, with some success both in pacifying the kingdom and in war with Portugal. But as his title was disputed he was compelled to purchase support by vast grants to the nobles and concessions to the cities, by which he gained the title ofEl de las Mercedes—he of the largesse. Henry was a strong ally of the French king in his wars with the English, who supported the claims of Peter’s natural daughters. He died on the 30th of May 1379.

HENRY III.(1390-1406) king of Castile, calledEl Doliente, the Sufferer, was the son of John I. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand of Portugal. He was born in 1379. The period of minority was exceptionally anarchical, even for Castile, but as the cities, always the best supporters of the royal authority, were growing in strength, Henry was able to reduce his kingdom to obedience, and, when he took the government into his own hands after 1393, to compel his nobles with comparative ease to surrender the crown lands they had seized. The meeting of the Cortes summoned by him at Madrid in 1394 marked a great epoch in the establishment of a practically despotic royal authority, based on the consent of the commons, who looked to the crown to protect them against the excesses of the nobles. Henry strengthened his position still further by his marriage with Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt and of Constance, elder daughter of Peter the Cruel and Maria de Padilla. This union combined the rival claims of the descendants of Peter and of Henry of Trastamara. The king’s bodily weakness limited his real capacity, and his early death on the 25th of December 1406 cut short the promise of his reign.

HENRY IV.(1453-1474), king of Castile, surnamed the Impotent, or the Spendthrift, was the son of John II. of Castile and Leon, and of his wife, Mary, daughter of Ferdinand I. of Aragon and Sicily. He was born at Valladolid on the 6th of January 1425. The surnames given to this king by his subjects are of much more than usual accuracy. His personal character was one of mere weakness, bodily and mental. Henry was an undutiful son, and his reign was one long period of confusion, marked by incidents of the most ignominious kind. He divorced his first wife Blanche of Navarre in 1453 on the ground of “mutual impotence.” Yet in 1468 he married Joan of Portugal, and when she bore a daughter, first repudiated her as adulterine, and then claimed her for his own. In 1468 he was solemnly deposed in favour of his brother Alphonso, on whose death in the same year his authority was again recognized. The last years of his life were spent in vain endeavours, first to force his half-sister Isabella, afterwards queen, to marry his favourite, the Master of Santiago, and then to exclude her from the throne. Henry died at Madrid on the 12th of December 1474.

HENRY I.(1008-1060), king of France, son of King Robert and his queen, Constance of Aquitaine, and grandson of Hugh Capet, came to the throne upon the death of his father in 1031, although in 1027 he had been anointed king at Reims and associated in the government with his father. His mother, who favoured her younger son Robert, and had retired from court upon Henry’s coronation, formed a powerful league against him, and he was forced to take refuge with Robert II., duke of Normandy. In the civil war which resulted, Henry was able to break up the league of his opponents in 1032. Constance died in 1034, and the rebel brother Robert was given the duchy of Burgundy, thus founding that great collateral line which was to rival the kings of France for three centuries. Henry atoned for this by a reign marked by unceasing struggle against the great barons. From 1033 to 1043 he was involved in a life and death contest with those nobles whose territory adjoined the royal domains, especially with the great house of Blois, whose count, Odo II., had been the centre of the league of Constance, and with the counts of Champagne. Henry’s success in these wars was largely due to the help given him by Robert of Normandy, but upon the accession of Robert’s son William (the Conqueror), Normandy itself became the chief danger. From 1047 to the year of his death, Henry was almost constantly at war with William, who held his own against the king’s formidable leagues and beat back two royal invasions, in 1055 and 1058. Henry’s reignmarks the height of feudalism. The Normans were independent of him, with their frontier barely 25 m. west of Paris; to the south his authority was really bounded by the Loire; in the east the count of Champagne was little more than nominally his subject, and the duchy of Burgundy was almost entirely cut off from the king. Yet Henry maintained the independence of the clergy against the pope Leo IX., and claimed Lorraine from the emperor Henry III. In an interview at Ivois, he reproached the emperor with the violation of promises, and Henry III. challenged him to a single combat. According to the German chronicle—which French historians doubt—the king of France declined the combat and fled from Ivois during the night. In 1059 he had his eldest son Philip crowned as joint king, and died the following year. Henry’s first wife was Maud, niece of the emperor Henry III., whom he married in 1043. She died childless in 1044. Historians have sometimes confused her with Maud (or Matilda), the emperor Conrad II.’s daughter, to whom Henry was affianced in 1033, but who died before the marriage. In 1051 Henry married the Russian princess Anne, daughter of Yaroslav I., grand duke of Kiev. She bore him two sons, Philip, his successor, and Hugh the great, count of Vermandois.

See theHistoriaeof Rudolph Glaber, edited by M. Prou (Paris, 1886); F. Sochnée,Catalogue des actes d’Henri Ier(1907); de Caiz de Saint Aymour,Anne de Russie, reine de France(1896); E. Lavisse,Histoire de France, tome ii. (1901), and the article on Henry I. inLa Grande Encyclopédieby M. Prou.

HENRY II.(1519-1559), king of France, the second son of Francis I. and Claude, succeeded to the throne in 1547. When only seven years old he was sent by his father, with his brother the dauphin Francis, as a hostage to Spain in 1526, whence they returned after the conclusion of the peace of Cambrai in 1530. Henry was too young to have carried away any abiding impressions, yet throughout his life his character, dress and bearing were far more Spanish than French. In 1533 his father married him to Catherine de’ Medici, from which match, as he said, Francis hoped to gain great advantage, even though it might be somewhat of a misalliance. In 1536 Henry, hitherto duke of Orleans, became dauphin by the death of his elder brother Francis. From that time he was under the influence of two personages, who dominated him completely for the remainder of his life—Diane de Poitiers, his mistress, and Anne de Montmorency, his mentor. Moreover, his younger brother, Charles of Orleans, who was of a more sprightly temperament, was his father’s favourite; and the rivalry of Diane and the duchesse d’Étampes helped to make still wider the breach between the king and the dauphin. Henry supported the constable Montmorency when he was disgraced in 1541; protested against the treaty of Crépy in 1544; and at the end of the reign held himself completely aloof. His accession in 1547 gave rise to a veritable revolution at the court. Diane, Montmorency and the Guises were all-powerful, and dismissed Cardinal de Tournon, de Longueval, the duchesse d’Étampes and all the late king’s friends and officials. At that time Henry was twenty-eight years old. He was a robust man, and inherited his father’s love of violent exercise; but his character was weak and his intelligence mediocre, and he had none of the superficial and brilliant gifts of Francis I. He was cold, haughty, melancholy and dull. He was a bigoted Catholic, and showed to the Protestants even less mercy than his father. During his reign the royal authority became more severe and more absolute than ever. Resistance to the financial extortions of the government was cruelly chastised, and the “Chambre Ardente” was instituted against the Reformers. Abroad, the struggle was continued against Charles V. and Philip II., which ended in the much-discussed treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Some weeks afterwards high feast was held on the occasion of the double marriage of the king’s daughter Elizabeth with the king of Spain, and of his sister Margaret with the duke of Savoy. On the 30th of June 1559, when tilting with the count of Montgomery, Henry was wounded in the temple by a lance. In spite of the attentions of Ambroise Paré he died on the 10th of July. By his wife Catherine de’ Medici he had seven children living: Elizabeth, queen of Spain; Claude, duchess of Lorraine; Francis (II), Charles (IX.) and Henry (III.), all of whom came to the throne; Marguerite, who became queen of Navarre in 1572; and Francis, duke of Alençon and afterwards of Anjou, who died in 1584.

The bulk of the documents for the reign of Henry II. are unpublished, and are in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Of the published documents, see especially the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici (ed. by de la Ferrière, Paris, 1880), of Diane de Poitiers (ed. by Guiffrey, Paris, 1866), of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d’Albret (ed. by Rochambeau, Paris, 1877), of Odet de Selve, ambassador to England (ed. by Lefèvre-Pontalis, Paris, 1888) and of Dominique du Gabre, ambassador to Venice (ed. by Vitalis, Paris, 1903); Ribier,Lettres et mémoires d’estat(Paris, 1666);Relations des ambassadeurs vénitiens, &c. Of the contemporary memoirs and histories, see Brantôme (ed. by Lalanne, Paris, 1864-1882), François de Lorraine (ed. by Michaud and Poujoulat, Paris, 1839), Montluc (ed. by de Ruble, Paris, 1864), F. de Boyvin du Villars (Michaud and Poujoulat), F. de Rabutin (Panthéon littéraire, Paris, 1836). See also de Thou,Historia sui temporis... (London, 1733); Decrue,Anne de Montmorency(Paris, 1889); H. Forneron,Les Ducs de Guise et leur époque, vol. i. (Paris, 1877); and H. Lemonnier, “La France sous Henri II” (Paris, 1904), in theHistoire de France, by E. Lavisse, which contains a fuller bibliography of the subject.

HENRY III.(1551-1589), king of France, third son of Henry II. and Catherine de’ Medici, was born at Fontainebleau on the 19th of September 1551, and succeeded to the throne of France on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574. In his youth, as duke of Anjou, he was warmly attached to the Huguenot opinions, as we learn from his sister Marguerite de Valois; but his unstable character soon gave way before his mother’s will, and both Henry and Marguerite remained choice ornaments of the Catholic Church. Henry won, under the direction of Marshal de Tavannes, two brilliant victories at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569). He was the favourite son of his mother, and took part with her in organizing the massacre of St Bartholomew. In 1573 Catherine procured his election to the throne of Poland. Passionately enamoured of the princess of Condé, he set out reluctantly to Warsaw, but, on the death of his brother Charles IX. in 1574, he escaped from his Polish subjects, who endeavoured to retain him by force, came back to France and assumed the crown. He returned to a wretched kingdom, torn with civil war. In spite of his good intentions, he was incapable of governing, and abandoned the power to his mother and his favourites. Yet he was no dullard. He was a man of keen intelligence and cultivated mind, and deserves as much as Francis I. the title of patron of letters and art. But his incurable indolence and love of pleasure prevented him from taking any active part in affairs. Surrounded by hismignons, he scandalized the people by his effeminate manners. He dressed himself in women’s clothes, made a collection of little dogs and hid in the cellars when it thundered. The disgust aroused by the vices and effeminacy of the king increased the popularity of Henry of Guise. After the “day of the barricades” (the 12th of May 1588), the king, perceiving that his influence was lost, resolved to rid himself of Guise by assassination; and on the 23rd of December 1588 his faithful bodyguard, the “forty-five,” carried out his design at the château of Blois. But the fanatical preachers of the League clamoured furiously for vengeance, and on the 1st of August 1589, while Henry III. was investing Paris with Henry of Navarre, Jacques Clement, a Dominican friar, was introduced into his presence on false letters of recommendation, and plunged a knife into the lower part of his body. He died a few hours afterwards with great fortitude. By his wife Louise of Lorraine, daughter of the count of Vaudémont, he had no children, and on his deathbed he recognized Henry of Navarre as his successor.

See the memoirs and chronicles of l’Estoile, Villeroy, Ph. Hurault de Cheverny, Brantôme, Marguerite de Valois, la Huguerye, du Plessis-Mornay, &c.;Archives curieusesof Cimber and Danjou, vols. x. and xi.;Mémoires de la Ligue(new ed., Amsterdam, 1758); the histories of T. A. d’Aubigné and J. A. de Thou; Correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici and of Henry IV. (in theCollection de documents inédits), and of the Venetian ambassadors, &c.; P. Matthieu,Histoire de France, vol. i. (1631); Scipion Dupleix,Histoire de Henri III(1633); Robiquet,Paris et la Ligue(1886); and J. H. Mariéjol, “La Réforme et la Ligue,” in theHistoire de France, by E. Lavisse (Paris, 1904), which contains a more complete bibliography.

HENRY IV.(1553-1610), king of France, the son of Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, head of the younger branch of the Bourbons, descendant of Robert of Clermont, sixth son of St Louis and of Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, was born at Pau (Basses Pyrénées) on the 14th of December 1553. He was educated as a Protestant, and in 1557 was sent to the court at Amiens. In 1561 he entered the Collège de Navarre at Paris, returning in 1565 to Béarn. During the third war of religion in France (1568-1570) he was taken by his mother to Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Protestant forces since the death of Louis I., prince of Condé, at Jarnac, and distinguished himself at the battle of Arnay-le-Duc in Burgundy in 1569. On the 9th of June 1572, Jeanne d’Albret died and Henry became king of Navarre, marrying Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX. of France, on the 18th of August of that year. He escaped the massacre of St Bartholomew on the 24th of August by a feigned abjuration. On the 2nd of February 1576, after several vain attempts, he escaped from the court, joined the combined forces of Protestants and of opponents of the king, and obtained by the treaty of Beaulieu (1576) the government of Guienne. In 1577 he secured the treaty of Bergerac, which foreshadowed the edict of Nantes. As a result of quarrels with his unworthy wife, and the unwelcome intervention of Henry III., he undertook the seventh war of religion, known as the “war of the lovers” (des amoureux), seized Cahors on the 5th of May 1580, and signed the treaty of Fleix on the 26th of November 1580. On the 10th of June 1584 the death of Monsieur, the duke of Anjou, brother of King Henry III., made Henry of Navarre heir presumptive to the throne of France. Excluded from it by the treaty of Nemours (1585) he began the “war of the three Henrys” by a campaign in Guienne (1586) and defeated Anne, duc de Joyeuse, at Coutras on the 20th of October 1587. Then Henry III., driven from Paris by the League on account of his murder of the duke of Guise at Blois (1588), sought the aid of the king of Navarre to win back his capital, recognizing him as his heir. The assassination of Henry III. on the 1st of August 1589 left Henry king of France; but he had to struggle for ten more years against the League and against Spain before he won his kingdom. The main events in that long struggle were the victory of Arques over Charles, duke of Mayenne, on the 28th of September 1589; of Ivry, on the 14th of March 1590; the siege of Paris (1590); of Rouen (1592); the meeting of the Estates of the League (1593), which theSatire Ménippéeturned to ridicule; and finally the conversion of Henry IV. to Catholicism in July 1593—an act of political wisdom, since it brought about the collapse of all opposition. Paris gave in to him on the 22nd of March 1594 and province by province yielded to arms or negotiations; while the victory of Fontaine-Française (1595) and the capture of Amiens forced Philip II. of Spain to sign the peace of Vervins on the 2nd of May 1598. On the 13th of April of that year Henry IV. had promulgated the Edict of Nantes.

Then Henry set to work to pacify and restore prosperity to his kingdom. Convinced by the experience of the wars that France needed an energetic central power, he pushed at times his royal prerogatives to excess, raising taxes in spite of the Estates, interfering in the administration of the towns, reforming their constitutions, and holding himself free to reject the advice of the notables if he consulted them. Aided by his faithful friend Maximilien de Béthune, baron de Rosny and duc de Sully (q.v.), he reformed the finances, repressed abuses, suppressed useless offices, extinguished the formidable debt and realized a reserve of eighteen millions. To alleviate the distress of the people, he undertook to develop both agriculture and industry: planting colonies of Dutch and Flemish settlers to drain the marshes of Saintonge, issuing prohibitive measures against the importation of foreign goods (1597), introducing the silk industry, encouraging the manufacture of cloth, of glass-ware, of tapestries (Gobelins), and under the direction of Sully—namedgrand-voyer de France—improving and increasing the routes for commerce. A complete system of canals was planned, that of Briare partly dug. New capitulations were concluded with the sultan Ahmed I. (1604) and treaties of commerce with England (1606), with Spain and Holland. Attempts were made in 1604 and 1608 to colonize Canada (seeChamplain, Samuel de). The army was reorganized, its pay raised and assured, a school of cadets formed to supply it with officers, artillery constituted and strongholds on the frontier fortified. While lacking the artistic tastes of the Valois, Henry beautified Paris, building the great gallery of the Louvre, finishing the Tuileries, building the Pont Neuf, the Hôtel-de-Ville and the Place Royale.

The foreign policy of Henry IV. was directed against the Habsburgs. Without declaring war, he did all possible harm to them by alliances and diplomacy. In Italy he gained the grand duke of Tuscany—marrying his niece Marie de’ Medici in 1600—the duke of Mantua, the republic of Venice and Pope Paul V. The duke of Savoy, who had held back from the treaty of Vervins in 1598, signed the treaty of Lyons in 1601; in exchange for the marquisate of Saluzzo, France acquired Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the bailliage of Gex. In the Low Countries, Henry sent subsidies to the Dutch in their struggle against Spain. He concluded alliances with the Protestant princes in Germany, with the duke of Lorraine, the Swiss cantons (treaty of Soleure, 1602) and with Sweden.

The opening on the 25th of March 1609 of the question of the succession of John William the Good, duke of Cleves, of Jülich and of Berg, led Henry, in spite of his own hesitations and those of his German allies, to declare war on the emperor Rudolph II. But he was assassinated by Ravaillac (q.v.) on the 14th of May 1610, upon the eve of his great enterprise, leaving his policy to be followed up later by Richelieu. Sully in hisÉconomies royalesattributes to his master the “great design” of constituting, after having defeated Austria, a vast European confederation of fifteen states—a “Christian Republic”—directed by a general council of sixty deputies reappointed every three years. But this “design” has been attributed rather to the imagination of Sully himself than to the more practical policy of the king.

No figure in France has been more popular than that of “Henry the Great.” He was affable to the point of familiarity, quick-witted like a true Gascon, good-hearted, indulgent, yet skilled in reading the character of those around him, and he could at times show himself severe and unyielding. His courage amounted almost to recklessness. He was a better soldier than strategist. Although at bottom authoritative he surrounded himself with admirable advisers (Sully, Sillery, Villeroy, Jeannin) and profited from their co-operation. His love affairs, undoubtedly too numerous (notably with Gabrielle d’Estrées and Henriette d’Entragues), if they injure his personal reputation, had no bad effect on his policy as king, in which he was guided only by an exalted ideal of his royal office, and by a sympathy for the common people, his reputation for which has perhaps been exaggerated somewhat in popular tradition by the circumstances of his reign.

Henry IV. had no children by his first wife, Margaret of Valois. By Marie de’ Medici he had Louis, later Louis XIII.; Gaston, duke of Orleans; Elizabeth, who married Philip IV. of Spain; Christine, duchess of Savoy; and Henrietta, wife of Charles I. of England. Among his bastards the most famous were the children of Gabrielle d’Estrées—Caesar, duke of Vendôme, Alexander of Vendôme, and Catherine Henriette, duchess of Elbeuf.

Several portraits of Henry are preserved at Paris, in the Bibliothèque Nationale (cf. Bouchot,Portraits au crayon, p. 189), at the Louvre (by Probus, bust by Barthélemy Prieur) at Versailles, Geneva (Henry at the age of fifteen), at Hampton Court, at Munich and at Florence.

The works dealing with Henry IV. and his reign are too numerous to be enumerated here. For sources, see theRecueil des lettres missives de Henri IV, published from 1839 to 1853 by B. de Xivrey, in theCollection de documents inédits relatifs à l’histoire de France, and the various researches of Galitzin, Bautiot, Halphen, Dussieux and others. Besides their historic interest, the letters written personally by Henry, whether love notes or letters of state, reveal a charming writer. Mention should be made of Auguste Poirson’sHistoire du règne de Henri IV(2nd ed., 4 vols., Paris, 1862-1867) and of J. H. Mariéjol’s volume (vi.) in theHistoire de France, edited by Ernest Lavisse (Paris, 1905), where main sources and literatureare given with each chapter. ARevue Henri IVhas been founded at Paris (1905). Finally, a complete survey of the sources for the period 1494-1610 is given by Henri Hauser in vol. vii. ofSources de l’histoire de France(Paris, 1906) in continuation of A. Molinier’s collection of the sources for French history during the middle ages.

HENRY I.(c.1210-1274), surnamedle Gros, king of Navarre and count of Champagne, was the youngest son of Theobald I. king of Navarre by Margaret of Foix, and succeeded his eldest brother Theobald III. as king of Navarre and count of Champagne in December 1270. His proclamation at Pamplona, however, did not take place till March of the following year, and his coronation was delayed until May 1273. After a brief reign, characterized, it is said, by dignity and talent, he died in July 1274, suffocated, according to the generally received accounts, by his own fat. In him the male line of the counts of Champagne and kings of Navarre, became extinct. He married in 1269 Blanche, daughter of Robert, count of Artois, and niece of King Louis IX. and was succeeded by his only legitimate child, Jeanne or Joanna, by whose marriage to Philip IV. afterwards king of France in 1284, the crown of Navarre became united to that of France.

HENRY II.(1503-1555), titular king of Navarre, was the eldest son of Jean d’Albret (d. 1516) by his wife Catherine de Foix, sister and heiress of Francis Phoebus, king of Navarre, and was born at Sanquesa in April 1503. When Catherine died in exile in 1517 Henry succeeded her in her claim on Navarre, which was disputed by Ferdinand I. king of Spain; and under the protection of Francis I. of France he assumed the title of king. After ineffectual conferences at Noyon in 1516 and at Montpellier in 1518, an active effort was made in 1521 to establish him in thede factosovereignty; but the French troops which had seized the country were ultimately expelled by the Spaniards. In 1525 Henry was taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia, but he contrived to escape, and in 1526 married Margaret, the sister of Francis I. and widow of Charles, duke of Alençon. By her he was the father of Jeanne d’Albret (d. 1572), and was consequently the grandfather of Henry IV. of France. Henry, who had some sympathy with the Huguenots, died at Pau on the 25th of May 1555.

HENRY I.(1512-1580), king of Portugal, third son of Emanuel the Fortunate, was born in Lisbon, on the 31st of January 1512. He was destined for the church, and in 1532 was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Braga. In 1542 he received the cardinal’s hat, and in 1578 when he was called to succeed his grandnephew Sebastian on the throne, he held the archbishoprics of Lisbon and Coimbra as well as that of Braga, in addition to the wealthy abbacy of Alcobazar. As an ecclesiastic he was pious, pure, simple in his mode of life, charitable, and a learned and liberal patron of letters; but as a sovereign he proved weak, timid and incapable. On his death in 1580, after a brief reign of seventeen months, the male line of the royal family which traced its descent from Henry, first count of Portugal (c.1100), came to an end; and all attempts to fix the succession during his lifetime having ignominiously failed, Portugal became an easy prey to Philip II. of Spain.

HENRY II.(1489-1568), duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was a son of Duke Henry I., and was born on the 10th of November 1489. He began to reign in 1514, but his brother William objected to the indivisibility of the duchy which had been decreed by the elder Henry, and it was only in 1535, after an imprisonment of eleven years, that William recognized his brother’s title. Sharing in an attack on John, bishop of Hildesheim, Henry was defeated at the battle of Soltau in June 1519, but afterwards he was more successful, and when peace was made received some lands from the bishop. In 1525 he assisted Philip, landgrave of Hesse, to crush the rising of the peasants in north Germany, and in 1528 took help to Charles V. in Italy, where he narrowly escaped capture. As a pronounced opponent of the reformed doctrines, he joined the Catholic princes in concerting measures for defence at Dessau and elsewhere, but on the other hand promised Philip of Hesse to aid him in restoring his own brother-in-law Ulrich, duke of Württemberg, to his duchy. However he gave no assistance when this enterprise was undertaken in 1534, and subsequently the hostility between Philip and himself was very marked. Henry was attacked by Luther with unmeasured violence in a writingWider Hans Worst; but more serious was his isolation in north Germany. The duke soon came into collision with the Protestant towns of Goslar and Brunswick, against the former of which a sentence of restitution had been pronounced by the imperial court of justice (Reichskammergericht). To conciliate the Protestants Charles V. had suspended the execution of this sentence, a proceeding which Henry declared wasultra vires. The league of Schmalkalden, led by Philip of Hesse and John Frederick, elector of Saxony, then took up arms to defend the towns; and in 1542 Brunswick was overrun and the duke forced to flee. In September 1545 he made an attempt to regain his duchy, but was taken prisoner by Philip, and only released after the victory of Charles V. at Mühlberg in April 1547. Returning to Brunswick, where he was very unpopular, he soon quarrelled with his subjects both on political and religious questions, while his duchy was ravaged by Albert Alcibiades, prince of Bayreuth. Henry was among the princes who banded themselves together to crush Albert, and after the death of Maurice, elector of Saxony, at Sievershausen in July 1553, he took command of the allied troops and defeated Albert in two engagements. In his later years he became more tolerant, and was reconciled with his Protestant subjects. He died at Wolfenbüttel on the 11th of June 1568. The duke was twice married, firstly in 1515 to Maria (d. 1541), sister of Ulrich of Württemberg, and secondly in 1556 to Sophia (d. 1575) daughter of Sigismund I., king of Poland. He attained some notoriety through his romantic attachment to Eva von Trott, whom he represented as dead and afterwards kept concealed at Staufenburg. Henry was succeeded by his only surviving son, Julius (1528-1589).

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