negotiated several treaties by which English traders might buy and sell
goods in other countries. One of the most famous of these commercial
treaties was the _Intercursus Magnus_ concluded in 1496 with the
duke of Burgundy, admitting English goods into the Netherlands. He
likewise encouraged English companies of merchants to engage in foreign
trade and commissioned the explorations of John Cabot in the New World.
Henry increased the prestige of his house by politic marital alliances.
He arranged a marriage between the heir to his throne, Arthur, and
Catherine, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish
sovereigns. Arthur died a few months after his wedding, but it was
arranged that Catherine should remain in England as the bride of the
king's second son, who subsequently became Henry VIII. The king's
daughter Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland, thereby
paving the way much later for the union of the crowns of England and
Scotland.

England in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, and the power of
the king appeared to be distinctly in the ascendant. Parliament was
fast becoming a purely formal and perfunctory body.


FRANCE

[Sidenote: The French Monarchy]

By the year 1500 the French monarchy was largely consolidated
territorially and politically. It had been a slow and painful process,
for long ago in 987, when Hugh Capet came to the throne, the France of
his day was hardly more than the neighborhood of Paris, and it had
taken five full centuries to unite the petty feudal divisions of the