VI.

Foreign Policy

Henry VII's foreign policy was the result of his dynastic and commercial aims. Owing debts to Brittany and France for support in exile, he had to neutralize the potential of foreign powers to profit from Yorkist plots, and safeguard his frontiers and Channel ports. Early truces with Scotland and France were ratified, and a treaty negotiated with Brittany. Henry's dynastic aims were governed by the need to marry his children advantageously. He had three sons—Arthur, Henry, and Edmund—and five daughters. But of his sons, only Henry was alive by the end of 1502, and only two daughters—Margaret and Mary—survived to adulthood.

In 1488 negotiations began for the betrothal of Henry’s eldest son, Arthur, to Catherine of Aragón, daughter of Ferdinand V and Isabella I, king and queen of Aragón and Castile. By the Treaty of Medina del Campo (1489), Spain was closed to Yorkist pretenders and an alliance with England projected. Arthur and Catherine were married in 1501, but Arthur died the following year, whereupon Henry opened fresh negotiations on behalf of Prince Henry, his second son. In 1503 Elizabeth of York died in childbirth. It was a personal loss to the king, but also an opportunity. As Henry was a widower, he was free to remarry. He began to negotiate with France and Spain. At the same time, he married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scotland, thereby assuring a Scottish amity for the remainder of the reign.

The Netherlands was the main refuge of Yorkist exiles and plotters, and Henry courted successive rulers, not least because England’s main exports were destined for these territories. In February 1496 a commercial treaty, the Magnus Intercursus, restored favourable trade conditions and closed the Netherlands to Yorkist conspirators, marking the end of a lengthy sequence of talks and economic sanctions between the two countries. Although fresh problems occurred when Archduke Philip tried to impose a new import duty on cloth, they were settled by a treaty in May 1499.

When Isabella I of Castile died in November 1504, Philip became the rival of Ferdinand V of Aragón for the regency of Castile. Henry VII depended on both Spain and the Netherlands for his security against France, but he had to choose between Philip and Ferdinand V, and his policy veered towards Philip. Prince Henry's nuptials to Catherine of Aragón were postponed, and Henry VII sent large subsidies to Philip to support his claim to Castile. When, in January 1506, Philip and his wife, Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand V and Isabella I, were blown ashore on to the English coast near Weymouth en route for Castile, Henry VII entertained them for three months. By the Treaty of Windsor, he recognized Philip as King of Castile, and the two rulers promised mutual defence and assistance against each other's rebels. By a second treaty, Philip pledged to marry his sister, Margaret, now regent of the Netherlands, to Henry VII. Lastly, Philip initiated the diplomacy that led to the Malus Intercursus (1506), so called by his subjects because they believed it to be too generous to England. When Philip unexpectedly died almost immediately afterwards, Henry was cheated of his investments, and had to settle for a triple entente between England, the Netherlands, and France.

France was the key to English foreign policy. Charles VIII had helped Henry to obtain the English throne, but was an uncertain ally. England and France were traditionally enemies, and France had designs on Brittany, which it wished to annex either militarily or by marriage. Henry saw this increase in French power as a threat to English security so agreed to aid Brittany by the Treaty of Redon (1489). Six thousand English troops were sent under Lord Daubeney's command. The Bretons were, however, divided, and their other allies unreliable. When Anne of Brittany married Charles VIII in December 1491, France had won without a fight, and the reunification of France, begun by Charles VII and Louis XI, was almost complete. Henry VII made a show of strength, reiterating Henry V's claim to the French Crown, and invading northern France in 1492 at the head of an army of 26,000. It was a risk, but Henry knew that Charles VIII's eyes were turning to Italy, and his aim was to make a quick bargain. The precedent was Edward IV's Treaty of Picquigny (1475), which was essentially a diplomatic and financial settlement.

Charles VIII complied by the Treaty of Étaples (1492) by which he agreed to drop his support for Perkin Warbeck and other Yorkist claimants, to indemnify the costs of Henry's interventions in Brittany, and to reimburse the arrears of Edward IV's pension due by the earlier treaty. It was a fiscal and political triumph, but Henry was lucky that France was embroiled in Italy after 1494. Henry's later foreign policy relied excessively on subsidies to Continental rulers and unrealistic marriage negotiations. His commercial treaties are also overrated: those with the Netherlands had to be unpicked by Sir Thomas More in 1515 on the grounds that they subordinated the needs of English trade to Henry's concern to ensure that Yorkist pretenders or rebels would not be harboured abroad.