t
has almost invariably been invested with that dukedom.[39] The original
selection of the title was due to substantial reasons. Henry's name
was distinctively Lancastrian, his title was no less distinctively
Yorkist; it was adopted as a concession to Yorkist prejudice. (p. 019)
It was a practical reminder of the fact which the Tudor laureate,
Skelton, celebrated in song: "The rose both red and white, in one rose
now doth grow". It was also a tacit assertion of the death of the last
Duke of York in the Tower and of the imposture of Perkin Warbeck, now
pretending to the title.

[Footnote 38: See the present writer in _D.N.B._,
xlvi., 271.]

[Footnote 39: An exception was made in the case of
the late Duke of Edinburgh. It was designed if
Henry VIII. had a second son, to make him Duke of
York (_L. and P._, vii., 1364).]

But thoughts of the coercion of Ireland and conciliation of Yorkists
were as yet far from the mind of the child, round whose person these
measures were made to centre. Precocious he must have been, if the
phenomenal development of brow and the curiously mature expression
attributed to him in his portrait[40] are any indication of his
intellectual powers at the age at which he is represented. Without the
childish lips and nose, the face might well be that of a man of fifty;
and with the addition of a beard, the portrait would be an unmistakable
likeness of Henry himself in his later years. When the Prince was no
more than a child, says Erasmus, he was set to study.[41] He had, we
are told, a vivid and active mind, above measure able to execute
whatever tasks he undertook; and he never attempted anything in which
he did not succeed.[42] The Tudors had no modern dread of educational
over-pressure when applied to their children, and the young Henry was
probably as forward a pupil as his son, Edward VI., his daughter,
Elizabeth, or his grand-niece, Lady Jane Grey. But, fortunately for
Henry, a physical exuberance corrected his mental precocity; and, (p. 020)
as he grew older, any excessive devotion to the Muses was checked by
an unwearied pursuit of bodily culture. He was the first of English
sovereigns to be educated under the new influence of the Renaissance.
Scholars, divines and poets thronged the Court of Henry VII. Margaret
Beaufort, who ruled in Henry's household, was a signal benefa