Chichester, as his Secretary; and on his appointment as Dean of St. Paul's he was succeeded in 1499 by Thomas Ruthal who held the office till Henry's death. Under the control of the Secretary were the Clerks of the Council, of whom the most notable in Henry's reign appear to have been Robert Rydon and John Baldes well. There were only two Viceroys or Lords Lieutenant of Ireland during Henry VII's reign, Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford (d. 1495), and the young Prince Henry. Various Deputies to the Lord Lieutenant were, however, given temporary appointments either as Lord Deputy or Lord Justice, including the Earl of Kildare, Sir Edward Poynings, Walter Fitzsimons, Archbishop of Dublin, Henry Deane, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Preston, Viscount Gormanstown. An interesting list of Henry VII's more unpopular agents is given in Perkin Warbeck's proclamation of 1497.2 Perkin's complaint, like that of the Northern Pilgrims of 1536, is that the king's ministers are "caitiffs and villains of simple birth ". 1 "Venetian Cal.," i. Nos. 691, 712, 722. * i. 152-3. APPENDIX II HENRY VII'S PARLIAMENTS. DURING Henry VII's reign of nearly twenty-four years only seven parliaments and one Great Council were summoned. The Great Council is described on p. 4€ of Vol. ii in general terms,1 but no record of its personnel has come to light; and the total absence of official returns of members to the House of Commons for Henry VII's reign renders it impossible to examine Henry's attitude towards its composition. The probability is that it was little altered during Henry's reign. The personnel of the peerage can be discussed with more knowledge; but considerable misapprehension exists on the point. Bishop Stubbs 2 has protested against current exaggerations of the destructive effects of the Wars of the Roses and Henry VII's reign upon the ranks of the peerage; but his protest has been accepted and repeated without its limitations and qualifications. It is true that the number of temporal peers summoned to Parliament in 1504 is only some half dozen short of that summoned fifty years earlier; but there had nevertheless been a fundamental change in their position. The numbers had not been greatly diminished, but all the tallest heads were gone. Before 1504 the dukedoms of Norfolk, Suffolk, Somerset, Exeter, York, Gloucester, and the earldoms of Salisbury, Warwick, Lincoln, Nottingham, Rivers, March, Rutland, and Worcester had all disappeared; and there was but one Duke (Buckingham) and one Marquis (Dorset) left in all England. Henry VII, indeed, created his childless uncle Jasper, Duke of Bedford, and his infant sons Henry and Edmund, Dukes of 1 See Busch, p. 109. "Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History," ed. 1887, pp. 405-6. York and Somerset; but Bedford died without male issue, Somerset died in infancy, and York became Prince of Wales. Apart from these creations, Henry in 1489 raised the old and childless Earl of Nottingham to the Marquisate of Berkeley which became extinct three years later, gave an English earldom (Bath) to his Breton supporter Philibert de Chandé, who was never summoned to Parliament,1 and an Irish earldom (Ormonde) to Thomas Butler, and created some half dozen or more barons, Daubeny, Cheyne, Dynham, Burgh, Darcy, Willoughby and Herbert. There were, as Henry VIII pointed out to the rebels of 1536, "but two worthy calling noble" in his council at his accession, viz. Surrey and Shrewsbury. The overmighty subjects who had made the Wars of the Roses could not even disturb the peaceful Parliament Chamber under Henry VII. 2 The following is a chronological table of the sessions of Henry's Parliaments. First Parliament. Met 7 Nov. 1485, adjourned 10 Dec. Reassembled 23 Jan. 1486, dissolved Feb. Second Parliament. Met 9 Nov. 1487, dissolved apparently before Christmas. Third Parliament. Met 13 Jan. 1489, prorogued 23 Feb. Reassembled 14 Oct., prorogued 4 Dec. Assembled again 25 Jan. 1490, dissolved 27 Feb. Fourth Parliament. Met 17 Oct. 1491, prorogued 4 Dec. Reassembled 26 Jan. 1492, dissolved 5 March, 1492. Fifth Parliament. Met 14 Oct. 1495. Sixth Parliament. Met 16 Jan. 1497, dissolved 13 March. Seventh Parliament. Met 25 Jan. 1504. 1 Another earldom (Winchester) was held by a foreigner who was not summoned to Parliament. There was still no necessary connexion between Peerage and Parliament; the possession of even an earldom did not involve a summons to Parliament, and the receipt of a special writ of summons to Parliament did not ipso facto create a hereditary passage. 2 Stubbs says three, omitting Darcy, Herbert, Willoughby, and Dynham. APPENDIX III. NOTES ON THE EXCHANGE VALUE OF MONEY. SOVEREIGNS were first coined in England in 14901 when it was ordained that the new coin should pass for twenty shillings and be twice the weight of the "royal" or "rose noble". The mark, worth 13s. 4d., had hitherto been the highest English coin, and the half mark (6s. 8d.) was called a "noble" and an "angel". Then came the "crown" which in Henry VII's reign was roughly equivalent to the French écu, the Spanish scudo, and the Italian ducat. The author of the "Italian Relation" reckons a crown as worth a third of a mark (i.e. about 4s. 5d.) or the fifth of a pound sterling (i.e. 4s.). In the "Spanish Calendar" the scudo is reckoned at 4s. 2d., and the crown at 4s.5 The ducat varied between 1453 and 1512 from 3s. 4d. to 4s. 4d., while the ecu was occasionally reckoned as high as 5s. 8d. or 5s. 6d. Below the crown the silver coins were the shilling and the groat; in the treaty of marriage between James IV and Margaret Tudor, twenty groats are reckoned at one "angel noble," and the "Italian Relation" says that fourteen groats equal a ducat." English pound was, however, equivalent to three pounds Scots.10 4 6 An In Henry's receipts for his French pension, a franc is reckoned at 20s. Tours, and a French crown at 35s. Tours; 35 francs were equivalent to 100 écus, and a louis d'or to 6s. 8d. 2 or 7s.1 In Spain 328 to 350 maravedis or more went to an English crown, while 375 maravedis were supposed to go to a ducat, and 34 maravedis to the Spanish real. At Calais proclamation was made in 1487 that 20s. English were to be reckoned equivalent to 30s. Flemish ; but as a rule an English royal or rose noble fetched only 14s. 6d. Flemish, and a pound sterling 26s. 8d.5 In 1502 Somerset and Warham complained that the English crown was current at only 35 stivers, that 12 groats made only 30 stivers, and a pound sterling fetched only six golden guilders.6 1iii. 37, 92; "Cely Papers," u.s. ii. 276. 6 iii. 277. |