Maritime Enterprise 1485-1558

The reign of Henry VII marks the opening of the modern era in the history of the English nation, the period in which, from being an agricultural and military people, we have become transformed into a maritime and commercial community, with interests stretching far beyond the shores of our immediate neighbours on the continent of Europe. Throughout the Middle Ages all the strivings and ambitions of England were concentrated on the conquest, by force of arms, of the surrounding countries—of the remaining parts of the British Isles at first, and afterwards of France. With a hardy and independent peasantry and a fierce and warlike baronage, it could scarcely have been otherwise. English kings found themselves obliged, for their own preservation, to put themselves at the head of such movements, and those of them who were unable or unwilling to do so were continually menaced by the turbulent elements to which they refused an outlet.

This system of violent expansion, successful in the cases of Ireland and Wales, and not seriously pursued in that of Scotland, proved to be its own destruction when applied to France. Although a military conquest might endure for a time, it was impossible that England could permanently absorb a nation larger than itself, of different blood, language, and manners of thought, in the same way that Wales had been absorbed. When Henry V commenced his wonderful career of conquest the sentiment of nationality was already too well established; and the long struggle, which ended forty years later in the expulsion of the English from France, consolidated that sentiment, and rendered the renewal of such an attempt for ever impossible of success. But just as France had developed from a mere geographical area into a nation in the modern sense of the word, so also had England, although much remained to be done before her development could proceed on truly national lines. The Wars of the Roses, protracted, with intervals of peace, for thirty years, cleared away much of the remaining débris of feudalism; and at their close Henry VII came forward as the first king of modern England. The old ideals, the old national instincts, and the old social order had gone, or were in process of dissolution; and the work of his reign consisted in forming new ones and giving direction to that universal awakening of the human mind which now first began to make its influence felt in the practical affairs of the English nation.

As with all changes of deep-rooted and far-reaching importance, its results were slow to manifest themselves, and were scarcely apparent to many of the greatest minds of the time, bred up to the old order, yet nevertheless working unconsciously in the furtherance of the new. The king himself, who did more than any other man to usher in the new era, and whose policy has been followed, with intervals of retrogression, almost to our own time, may well have been unaware how greatly he differed from his forerunners, and there is nothing in his recorded utterances to show that he realized the significance of the change that was taking place. In fact, as compared with many of the more flamboyant statesmen who followed him, he must have appeared slow and conservative, a survival of mediaevalism rather than a man of the Renaissance. Like the evolution of the natural world, that of imperial Britain has been largely unconscious, and measures which owed their origin to expediency and the needs of the moment have frequently hardened into enduring elements of the national system. Let us then examine, from this point of view, one aspect of the reign of the first Tudor—his commercial policy; bearing in mind that, although he himself was concerned only with the immediate welfare of his family and country, his work was of such a character as to serve as the foundation for an edifice upon which the passage of four Centuries has not yet placed the topmost stone.