The Ballad History of the Reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.

The Ballad History of the Reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. by Professor C. H. Firth, LL.D,, V.P. was reprinted from The Transactions Of The Royal Historical Society, Third Series. Vol. II. This was read on November 21st 1907 and published in London in 1908. (50 pages)

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.....Ballads are useful as a supplement to graver historical authorities, and throw a light upon the history of the past which we could not derive from other sources. It is generally not difficult to know what the great men of any day—the nobles, and statesmen, and men of letters—thought about the events which happened in their time. We have their letters, or their speeches, or their biographies; but it is difficult to know what the common people who formed the mass of the nation thought, and it is important to know this too. Here the ballads help us, because they were the literature of the populace, composed by men of the people for the people, reflecting popular feeling and helping to shape it We may divide them roughly into three classes: firstly, there are the long narrative ballads which embody either traditional accounts of some past event or popular versions of some recent event, and show us what people believed to have happened; secondly, there is another class of ballads which express the feelings of the moment about the events of the day, and set forth the joy or sorrow of the people about something which was happening at the time. These are often satirical in their tone, and not easy to distinguish from the regular satirical poems of the period composed by professional writers.
.....The narrative ballads were for the most part handed down orally or in manuscript; most of those which survive exist in manuscripts dating from the later part of the sixteenth or the early part of the seventeenth century, and were first printed by antiquarians at a later date. On the other hand, the expressions of opinion about contemporary events often found their way into print at once, and were sold and circulated like any other form of literature at the time when they were composed. This kind of ballad began to be printed towards the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, and was published still more frequently under Edward VI. and Mary, while hundreds of them issued from the press in the days of Elizabeth.
.....There is yet a third class of ballads to be mentioned. At the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century professional ballad-makers sprang up, and began to produce historical ballads for the market, just as people produce historical text-books now. They took the legendary history of England as they found it told by Tudor chroniclers, such as Hall or Grafton or Holinshed, and put it into verse for the delectation and instruction of the people. The three chief of these professional ballad-makers were Ulpian Fulwell, Thomas Deloney, and Richard Johnson. They should be classed with popular historians rather than popular poets, for their prosaic verses show us what sort of a king people conceived Henry VIII. to be a generation or two after his death, and what version of his character was received as true.
.....A century, however, lies between the accession of the Tudors and the rise of these professional writers of historical ballads. At the time when Henry VII. ascended the throne the men who wrote the ballads were either the minstrels who sang them or dependents of the great families whose deeds they celebrated. Judging from the small part of this literature which has survived, each of the greater and more famous feudal families seems to have had its bard or its poet. There are fragments of a cycle of ballads about the Percys, beginning with ‘Chevy Chase,’ and of another about the Howards, and of a third about the Stanleys. The third is the most important historically, for the Stanleys and their dependents played the chief part in the events which made Henry VII. King of England.
.....One ballad of the Stanley cycle is called 'The Rose of England.' It is to some extent allegorical, for each of the leading personages is designated by his cognizance or crest, not by his name. Henry himself is the Rose and Richard is the White Boar. England is pictured as a fair garden with a beautiful tree of red roses in its midst Then came in 'a beast men call a boar' and he 'rooted this garden up and down' and tore asunder the rose-tree, and buried its branches in a clod of clay that they might never bloom or bear again. But a sprig of the rose survived. Henry landed in England to claim his right and Lord Stanley joined him.