In the first place he was opposed by the party of the Old Nobility. By this we do not mean Norfolk and other time-servers of his opinion, but another and weaker faction, the remaining members of the Yorkist nobility, who had survived the Wars of the Roses. The religious problems of Henry’s reign somewhat obscure its connection with the history of the century before it. The days of Cranmer and Pole seem so far removed from those of Warwick the Kingmaker and Richard Crookback that it requires an effort to realise that Henry had to deal with a legacy of trouble from the earlier period, as well as with his own share of the difficulties of the new age. The previous storm had not yet passed away when the new cloud appeared on the horizon and the two broke in full fury upon the unfortunate house of Pole. Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the only living child of George, Duke of Clarence, was chief among the old aristocracy, who were now sometimes called the party of the White Rose. Katherine of Arragon had been warmly attached to the Countess and her family. The tender-hearted queen believed that Margaret’s brother was sacrificed in order to bring about her marriage with Prince Arthur. The Countess’ eldest son, Henry, Lord Montague, married Jane Neville, daughter to Lord Abergavenny, while her daughter Ursula became the wife of Lord Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham’s son. It was even whispered that higher honours awaited the Poles. The Countess became governess to the Princess Mary, and Queen Katherine would gladly have seen a marriage between her daughter and her friend’s son Reginald, who was a promising lad of sixteen when Mary was born in 1516. The family was closely connected by blood and friendship with Edward Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and his wife Gertrude. The Marquis was the son of Katherine, the youngest daughter of Edward IV, and therefore heir to the throne, after the Tudors: a very dangerous position[57]. Henry had learnt his lesson from his father too well to allow this state of things to continue. For the last hundred years the nobles had kept the kingdom in a turmoil. Northumberland, Warwick, the second Duke of Buckingham, had in turn made and unmade kings at their pleasure; now the day of reckoning had come. The two Henrys performed in England the work that Richelieu was to achieve in France a century later; they made the nobles realise at the cost of much bloodshed, that there was to be one king in the country, not half-a-dozen. No one can deny that they triumphed only by means of cruelty and injustice, and that their motives were selfish. But when it is considered how greatly the nation benefited, and when the fate of countries like Poland where the work was never carried out is remembered, it seems ungrateful to abuse the kings who did so much for their country at the cost of their reputation.