Burgundy, Netherlands and Holy Roman Empire

• The bulk of England's exports went through the ports of the Netherlands, such as Antwerp and Bruges, which came under Burgundy's jurisdiction
• It was important for commercial reasons for good relations to be maintained between England and Burgundy
• Complicating factor


  The presence of Margaret, widowed Duchess of Burgundy in ownership of her late-husband's estate
• Margaret was the sister of Edward IV and Richard III, and the leading upholder of the Yorkist cause
• Margaret enlisted the support of her stepson-in-law, Maximilian, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1493 and passed over jurisdiction in the Netherlands to his sixteen-year-old son Philip in the following year
• Relations between England and Burgundy deteriorated

  As a result of the hospitality which Maximilian and Philip were offering to Perkin Warbeck
• Henry gambled that putting an embargo on English trade with Burgundy


  Would ease the matter
• The problem this caused was that it brought two of Henry's foreign policy objectives - securing the dynasty and encouraging trade - into conflict with each other
• In giving priority to his dynastic interests, Henry showed himself prepared to sacrifice the commercial interests of London and east-coast merchants, which did nothing for his popularity in those parts of the country
• Relations did improve to an extent after Warbeck left Burgundy, and Henry and Philip were able to agree the Intercursus Magnus in 1496 which brought the trade embargo to an end
• Anglo-Burgundian relations again became central to Henry's foreign policy calculations in 1504 following the death of Isabella, Queen of Castile
• One of the outcomes of the resulting Treaty of Windsor was a new trade agreement, the Intercursus Malus
• In this, Henry showed the same forceful approach which by this time he was adopting in his domestic financial affairs: he demanded a trade deal which would have given a much stronger trading position to English merchants in the Netherlands had it ever been enforced (in the end, this trade deal was never put into practice)
• Another outcome was that Philip and Maximilian agreed to hand over their Yorkist fugitive, the Earl of Suffolk, whom Henry promptly imprisoned in the Tower
• Henry appeared to have improved both England's trading position and also the security of the dynasty