Henry VII refrained in general from foreign war, but sought by other means to promote the international welfare of his country. He negotiated several treaties by which English traders might buy and sell goods in other countries. One of the most famous of these commercial treaties was the _Intercursus Magnus_ concluded in 1496 with the duke of Burgundy, admitting English goods into the Netherlands. He likewise encouraged English companies of merchants to engage in foreign trade and commissioned the explorations of John Cabot in the New World. Henry increased the prestige of his house by politic marital alliances. He arranged a marriage between the heir to his throne, Arthur, and Catherine, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish sovereigns. Arthur died a few months after his wedding, but it was arranged that Catherine should remain in England as the bride of the king's second son, who subsequently became Henry VIII. The king's daughter Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland, thereby paving the way much later for the union of the crowns of England and Scotland. England in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, and the power of the king appeared to be distinctly in the ascendant. Parliament was fast becoming a purely formal and perfunctory body. FRANCE [Sidenote: The French Monarchy] By the year 1500 the French monarchy was largely consolidated territorially and politically. It had been a slow and painful process, for long ago in 987, when Hugh Capet came to the throne, the France of his day was hardly more than the neighborhood of Paris, and it had taken five full centuries to unite the petty feudal divisions of the country into the great centralized state which we call France. The Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of most of the great inheritance of the Angevin branch of his own family, including Anjou, and Provence east of the Rhone; and on the south the French frontier had been carried to the Pyrenees. Finally, Louis's son, Charles VIII (1483-1498), by marrying the heiress of Brittany, had absorbed that western duchy into France. [Sidenote: Steady Growth of Royal Power in France]