crown cost him his head; he had
always been discontented with Tudor rule, especially under Wolsey; he
allowed himself to be encouraged with hopes of succeeding the King,
and possibly spoke of asserting his claim in case of Henry's death.
This was to touch Henry on his tenderest spot, and, in 1521, the Duke
was tried by his peers, found guilty of high treason, and sent to the
block.[519] In this, as in all the great trials of Henry's reign, and
indeed in most state trials of all ages, considerations of justice
were subordinated to the real or supposed dictates of political
expediency. Buckingham was executed, not because he was a criminal,
but because he was, or might become, dangerous; his crime was not
treason, but descent from Edward III. Henry VIII., like Henry VII.,
showed his grasp of the truth that nothing makes a government so
secure as the absence of all alternatives.

[Footnote 517: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1287. Buckingham's
end was undoubtedly hastened by Wolsey's jealousy;
before the end of 1518 the Cardinal had been
instilling into Henry's ear suspicions of
Buckingham (_L. and P._, iii., 1; _cf. ibid._, ii.,
3973, 4057). Brewer regards the hostility of Wolsey
to Buckingham as one of Polydore Vergil's
"calumnies" (_ibid._, vol. iii., Introd., p.
lxvi.).]

[Footnote 518: _L. and P. of Richard III. and Henry
VII._, i., 233.]

[Footnote 519: See detailed accounts in _L. and
P._, iii., 1284, 1356. Shakespeare's account in
"Henry VIII." is remarkably accurate, except in
matters of date.]

Buckingham's execution is one of the symptoms that, as early as 1521,
the failure of his issue had made Henry nervous and susceptible about
the succession. Even in 1519, when Charles V.'s minister, (p. 183)
Chievres, was proposing to marry his niece to the Earl of Devonshire,
a grandson of Edward IV., Henry was suspicious, and Wolsey inquired
whether Chievres was "looking to any chance of the Earl's succession
to the throne of England."[520] If further proof were needed that
Henry's anxiety about the succession was not, as has been represented,
a mere afterthought intended to justify his divorce from Catherine, it
might be found in the extrao