leaped itself, and
the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England's
friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed
to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in
the north, south, and east as well.

Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father.
All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a
youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor
desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. Fully aware of the power
his father's wealth gave him politically, he was determined to share no
part of the onus for the oppression with which the wealth had been
collected; and on the day following his father's death, before himself
retiring to mourning reclusion in the Tower of London, the unpopular
financial instruments of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley and others, were
laid by the heels to sate the vengeance of the people. The Spanish match
for the young king was by far more popular in England than any other; and
the alacrity of Henry himself and his ministers to carry it into effect
without further delay, now that his father with his personal ambitions and
enmities was dead, was also indicative of his desire to begin his reign by
pleasing his subjects.

The death of Henry VII. had indeed cleared away many obstacles. Ferdinand
had profoundly distrusted him. His evident desire to obtain control of
Castile, either by his marriage with Juana or by that of his daughter Mary
with the nine-year-old Archduke Charles, had finally hardened Ferdinand's
heart against him, whilst Henry's fear and suspicion of Ferdinand had, as
we have seen, effectually stood in the way of the completion of
Katharine's marriage. With young Henry as king affairs stood differently.
Even before his father's death Ferdinand had taken pains to assure him of
his love, and had treated him as a sovereign over the dying old king's
head. Before the breath was out of Henry VII., Ferdinand's letters were
speeding to London to make all things smooth. There would be no opposition
now to Ferdinand's ratification of his Flemish grandson's marriage with
Henry's sister Mary. The clever old Aragonese knew there was still plenty
of time to stop that later; and certainly young Henry could not interfere
in Castile, as his father might have done, on the strength of Mary Tudor's
betrothal. So all went merry as a marriage bell. Ferdinand,