with so tenderly that they took clemency for weakness. Warbeck's Cornish
rising was turned conveniently to account for the replenishment of the
royal treasury by the infliction of fines, but no one who had supported it
could complain of harsh treatment; rather they must have felt in every case
that they had been let off very easily according to all precedents.

Even when Lovel's and Simnel's risings were in actual progress, pardons
were offered to such of the rebels as would make haste to repent; and there
was no withdrawal of those pardons afterwards on more or less plausible
pretexts, in the manner of preceding Kings and of Henry's successor after
the Pilgrimage of Grace. Broadly speaking it was the King's policy to
emphasise the fact that he had no intention of attempting to play the
tyrant, or to vary a rash generosity by capricious blood-thirstiness, like
Richard III. The sole victim of tyrannous treatment in this sense
throughout the reign was the unhappy Warwick.

[Sidenote: Repression of the nobles]

But the attitude of strict conformity to law was entirely compatible with
that steady concentration of all real control in the King's hands, which
was the leading object of Henry's policy. For this purpose the primary
condition was that none of his subjects should be sufficiently powerful to
challenge his authority and raise the standard of revolt, as the King-Maker
and others had done in the past. The old nobility were practically wiped
out. Insignificant husbands were chosen for the daughters of York. The
blood of the Plantagenets ran in the veins of the house of Buckingham; but
it was only in the last generation that the De la Poles had mated with the
royal house, and their estates were much diminished; the Howards had
suffered as supporters of Richard. Surrey indeed was deservedly restored
to grace; but no amount of personal loyalty or of royal favour exempted the