CHAPTER V.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VII.

Henry's Defective Title--Imprisonment of the Earl of Warwick--The

King's Title to the Throne--His Marriage--Lovel's Rising--Lambert

Simnel--Henry's prompt Action--Failure of the Rebellion--The

Queen's Coronation--The Act of Maintenance--Henry's Ingratitude

to the Duke of Brittany--Discontent in England--Expedition to

France and its Results--Henry's Second Invasion--Treaty of

Étaples--Perkin Warbeck--His Adventures in Ireland, France,

and Burgundy--Henry's Measures--Descent on Kent--Warbeck in

Scotland--Invasion of England--The Cornish Rising--Warbeck

quits Scotland--He lands in Cornwall--Failure of the

Rebellion--Imprisonment of Warbeck and his subsequent

Execution--European Affairs--Marriages of Henry's Daughter and

Son--Betrothal of Catherine and Prince Henry--Henry's Matrimonial

Schemes--Royal Exactions--A Lucky Capture--Henry proposes for

Joanna--His Death.

Though Henry Tudor had conquered Richard III. on the field of Bosworth,

he had no title whatever to the crown of England, except such as the

people, by their own free choice, should give him. He was descended, it

is true, from Edward III., through John of Gaunt, but from the offspring

of not only an illicit, but an adulterous connection. When the natural

children of John of Gaunt, therefore, were legitimatised by Act of

Parliament, that Act expressly declared them incapable of inheriting the

crown. Still more, the true hereditary claim lay in the house of York;

and had that line been totally extinct, and had the bar against his line

not existed, the royal house of Portugal at least had a superior title in

point of descent from John of Gaunt. Further still, he stood attainted

as a traitor by Act of Parliament, and could not, therefore, assert a

Parliamentary right. Yet, as we have said, for years public expectation,

overlooking the claims of all others of both the contending lines, had

turned towards him, as the individual destined by Providence to put an

end to the sanguinary broils of York and Lancaster, and unite them in

peace.

The only son of the late Duke of Clarence, who, next to the children

of Edward IV., was the heir apparent of the line of York, had been

confined by his uncle, Richard III., in the castle of Sheriff Hutton,

in Yorkshire. Richard had at first treated this poor boy with kindness;

he had created him Earl of Warwick, the title of his illustrious

grandfather, the king-maker. On the death of his own son, he had at first

proposed to nominate him his heir; but, fearing that he might be too

dangerous a competitor, he had omitted that favour, and conferred it on

the Earl of Lincoln, John de la Pole, the son of his sister the Duchess

of Suffolk, and therefore nephew both of himself and Edward IV. Henry,

the very first day after the battle of Bosworth, despatched Sir Robert

Willoughby to take the young earl from Sheriff Hutton, and convey him to

the Tower of London. Henry then put himself at the head of his victorious

troops, and commenced his march towards the capital. Everywhere he was

received, not as a conqueror, but a deliverer.

He arrived safely at Kennington, and after dining with Thomas Bourchier,

Archbishop of Canterbury, he proceeded with a splendid attendance of

lords, both spiritual and temporal, towards the city. The nobles,

imitating the absurd custom of France, rode two together on one horse,

to show how completely the rival parties had amalgamated, and in this

ridiculous style they passed through the city to the Tower, where Henry

for the present took up his residence. On the 30th of October he was

crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he immediately appointed a

body-guard of fifty archers to attend upon him. This was an indication of

distrust in his subjects or of the state of a conqueror, which astonished

and dismayed the public; but Henry assured them that it was merely the

state which, on the Continent, was now deemed essential to a king.

The Parliament assembled on the 7th of November, to settle the new order

of things. Before proceeding to business they found themselves in a great

dilemma. No less than 107 of the members were persons attainted during

the last two reigns, and were therefore disqualified for acting. They

were the most zealous partisans of the house of Lancaster, and immediate

application was made to the judges for their decision on this new and

singular case. They came to the conclusion that the attainted members

could not take their seats till their attainders were reversed, and a

bill was passed by the remaining members accordingly.

When Henry met his duly qualified Parliament, he informed them that

"he had come to the throne by just title of inheritance, and by the

sure judgment of God, who had given him the victory over his enemies in

the field." In this declaration he was careful, while he asserted what

was not true, to avoid what would alarm the pride and the fears of the

nation. He had no just title of inheritance, as we have shown, and he

dared not use the words "right of conquest," for such right was held

to imply a lapse of all the lands in the nation to the Crown, since

they had been held of the prince who had been conquered. Lest he had,

even in speaking of victory, gone too far, he immediately added, that

"every man should continue to enjoy his rights and hereditaments, except

such persons as in the present Parliament should be punished for their

offences against his royal majesty."

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF HENRY VII.]

Another claim to the crown, which Henry was still more careful to ignore,

though it was one on which he secretly placed confidence, was the right

of Elizabeth of York, whom he had pledged himself to marry, and who was

the undoubted owner of the throne. But as Henry would not owe his throne

to his people, so he would not owe it to his wife. He therefore used

every means to establish his own title to the throne before he in any

way alluded to hers, or took any steps towards fulfilling his pledge

of marriage. He renewed that pledge, indeed, on arriving in London, to

satisfy the York party; but he proceeded to have his claims to the throne

acknowledged by Parliament without any reference to hers. If he had

mentioned the right of Elizabeth of York, his extreme caution suggested

that he would be held to possess the throne, not by his own claims, but

by hers, an idea which equally offended his pride, and alarmed him for

the security of the succession in his offspring. Should Elizabeth die

without children, in that case the right would die with her; and any

issue of his by another marriage might be accounted intruders in the

succession, and they might be removed for the next heirs of Edward IV.

If she should die childless, and even before him, even his own retention

of the throne might be disputed. All these points the mind of Henry saw

clearly; and in a moment, and as if no such person as Elizabeth existed,

and as if no pledge to marry her had helped him to his success, he

procured an Act of Parliament, which provided that "the inheritance of

the crown should be, rest, remain, and abide in the most royal person

of the then sovereign lord, King Henry VII., and the heirs of his body

lawfully coming, perpetually with the grace of God so to endure, and in

none other."

But this excess of caution and this nicely balanced policy had not been

carried through without alarming all parties, and greatly disgusting

that of York. The whole country looked to the union of the houses by

the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth as the only means of putting an

end to the civil wars which had so long rent the nation. Still Henry,

though now securely seated on the throne, evinced no haste to fulfil

his pledge of placing Elizabeth of York upon it. It was not, therefore,

till the feeling of the public became strongly manifested at his neglect

of the princess, and till the Commons presented him a petition praying

him "to take to wife the Princess Elizabeth, which marriage they hoped

God would bless with a progeny of the race of kings;" and till the

Lords, spiritual and temporal, had testified their participation in this

wish, by rising simultaneously and bowing as it was uttered, that Henry

consented to the celebration of the marriage.

The marriage took place on the 18th of January, 1486, and the rejoicings

in London, Westminster, and other cities were of the most lively kind.

They were heartfelt, for now all parties concluded that there was hope

of peace and comfort. They were far more ardent than at the king's

accession or coronation, and the mean-souled monarch saw it with sullen

displeasure, for it seemed to imply that though he had taken such pains

to place foremost his right to the throne, the people recognised,

spontaneously, the superior title of the house of York, and that of

his beautiful, and by him superciliously treated wife. Lord Bacon,

who is the great historian of this period, and who may be supposed to

be sufficiently informed, does not hesitate to add that the manifest

affection of the people for the queen produced in him towards her

additional coldness and dislike.

Henry, before dismissing his Parliament, conferred favours and promotions

on many of his friends. The two persons, however, whose counsels and

administrative services he chiefly valued, were Bishops Morton and Fox,

the latter of whom he raised to the see of Exeter. They had shared in

all his adversities, and were now admitted to participate in his high

fortune. Morton was, on the death of Bourchier, made Primate of England;

and Fox was entrusted with the Privy Seal, and successively made Bishop

of Bath and Wells, Durham, and finally, Winchester. These two able

prelates were Henry's ministers and constant advisers. "He loved," says

the historian of the time, "to have a convenient number of right grave

and wise priests to be of his council; because," adds Bacon, "having rich

bishoprics to bestow, it was easy to reward their services."

Having dismissed his Parliament, and left all in order, Henry set out

on a progress through the kingdom. The people of the northern counties

had been the most devoted to Richard, and he sought, by spending some

time amongst them, to remove their prejudices and attach them to his

interests. He had advanced as far as Lincoln, and was there keeping

his Easter, on the 2nd day of April, when he learned that Lord Lovel,

formerly chamberlain to Richard, with Humphrey and Thomas Stafford,

had left the sanctuary at Colchester, and were gone with dangerous

intentions, no man knew whither. The news did not seem to give him much

concern, and he proceeded towards York. At Nottingham, more pressing and

alarming intelligence reached him, that Lord Lovel was advancing towards

York with 4,000 men, and that the two Staffords were besieging Worcester

with another army.

At Nottingham, Henry received an embassy from the King of the Scots;

and despatching his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, with about 3,000 men

in pursuit of Lord Lovel, on the 6th of April he quitted Northampton

in the same direction. At Pontefract he was met, on the 17th, by the

news that Lovel had passed him on the road, had raised a force in the

neighbourhood of Ripon and Middleham, and was preparing to surprise him

on his entrance into York. Henry's courage did not fail him; he was

now surrounded by most of the northern and southern nobility, who had

brought up considerable forces. But the man who always trusted more to

his shrewd knowledge of human nature than to arms, now hit on a means

of dispersing the insurgent army without a blow. He sent on his uncle,

Jasper of Bedford, to offer a free pardon to all who would desert Lovel's

standard, and the whole host dispersed as by magic. It was, in fact, the

magic of the right incentive applied at the right moment. Lovel, who was

as much affected by the proclamation of pardon as his followers--for it

instantly struck him with the fear of universal desertion--fled at once

to the house of his friend, Sir Thomas Broughton, in Lancashire; and,

after lying concealed there some days, contrived to escape to the court

of the Duchess of Burgundy, in Flanders. Some of his followers, as it

would seem, in defiance of the king's offer of pardon, were seized and

executed by the Earl of Northumberland.

On the 30th of September the queen was prematurely delivered of a

son, who, however, was pronounced a strong and healthy child, and was

christened by the name of Arthur, after Prince Arthur of the ancient

Britons, from whom Henry pretended to derive his descent. But the birth

of an heir-apparent tried too severely the temper of the numerous

malcontents who still existed. Though Henry had put himself to much

trouble, and to some cost, to win over the people of the northern

counties, his conduct in general had not been such as to conciliate the

enemies of the Lancastrian line.

However, the Yorkist party, though roused to disturb the quiet of the

king, prepared their measures of annoyance with a lack of acumen which

was more likely to irritate than overturn. Perhaps they did not want to

dethrone him, because that would overturn also the head, and most popular

representative of their own party--Elizabeth; especially as she was now

the mother of a legitimate prince, capable of uniting all interests.

Perhaps they wished rather to show the cold and unforgiving monarch

that he was more at their mercy than he supposed, and that they could

embitter, if they did not proceed to terminate, his reign. Such, in fact,

whether this was their purpose or not, were the character and tendency of

the plots and impostures which, for so many years, kept Henry in disquiet

and anxiety.

The first attempt was to bring forward a youth as the Earl of Warwick,

the son of Clarence, whom Henry was keeping confined in the Tower. So

little depth was there in this plot, that at first it was evidently the

plan to bring the impostor forward as the Duke of York, the younger of

the two princes supposed to be murdered in the Tower. It was given out

that though his elder brother had been murdered, the younger had been

allowed to escape. Had this story been adhered to, and well acted, it

might have raised a most formidable rebellion; but, for some unknown

reason, it was as speedily abandoned as adopted, and the Earl of Warwick

pitched upon as the preferable impersonation. Nothing, however, could be

more absurd, for the true earl being really alive, Henry could at any

moment bring him forward.

Towards the close of the year 1486, there appeared at the castle of

Dublin a priest of Oxford named Richard Simon, attended by a boy of

about fifteen years of age. The boy was of a peculiarly handsome and

interesting appearance; and Simon, who was a total stranger in Ireland,

presented him to the lord-deputy, the Earl of Kildare, as Edward

Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who, he represented, had fortunately

escaped from his dungeon in the Tower of London, and had come to throw

himself under the protection of the earl and his friends. Thomas

Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, was a zealous Yorkist; his brother was

chancellor, and almost all the bishops and officers in the Irish

Government had been appointed by Edward IV. or Richard. It is most likely

that the lord-deputy and the party were already cognisant of the whole

scheme of this agitation; for it is neither likely that Simon the priest

should have originated so daring and arduous an enterprise as that of

presenting a new claimant for the throne in opposition to the astute

and determined Henry Tudor, nor that he should have so particularly

singled out Ireland as the opening ground of his operations, and the

lord-deputy as his patron and coadjutor. What sufficiently proved this

was, that simultaneously the Earl of Lincoln, of whom we have lately made

mention, son to the eldest sister of the two late kings, had disappeared

from England and gone over to his aunt Margaret, Duchess-Dowager of

Burgundy, Henry's most inveterate enemy. This satisfied the king that

the plot which showed itself in Ireland was produced in England, and was

fomented by the Yorkist party at large. It was soon found that Simon had

been diligently instructing the young pretender, whose name was Lambert

Simnel, before he produced him in public, in all the arcana of the

character he had to support.

The loyalty of the lord-deputy had been already questionable. Henry had

sent him a summons to attend in London, but he evaded that by a petition

from the spiritual and temporal peers of Ireland, stating strongly the

absolute necessity of his presence there. No sooner did Simon present

his _protégé_ to Kildare, than that nobleman received him without any

apparent reluctance to put faith in his story.

When Henry received this news, he hastened to do what he ought to have

done long before. He took the Earl of Warwick out of the Tower, conducted

him publicly to St. Paul's, so that all might see him, and all who

desired it were allowed to approach him, and converse with him. The

nobility and gentry were personally introduced to him, and the king then

took him with him to Sheen, where he held his court, and gave familiar

access to all those who had seen or known him before. By this politic

act he completely satisfied the people of England, who laughed at the

impostor in Ireland; but the Irish, on the contrary, declared that

Henry's Warwick was the impostor, and theirs the real one. To consult on

the best measures for defeating this plot, Henry called a great council

at Sheen; but at its breaking up, the public were thrown into still

greater surprise and perplexity by the king, who, instead of offering to

crown the queen, seized her mother, the queen-dowager, confiscated her

property, and consigned her to the custody of the monks of Bermondsey.

The reason assigned was, that the queen-dowager, in the last reign,

had promised her daughter to Henry, and then put her into the hands of

Richard. Such a reason, if really put forward, was a simple absurdity,

because since then Elizabeth Woodville had been living at court as

the queen-mother, in all public honour. The real cause was presumably

connected with the business in hand--the Simnel conspiracy. This is the

opinion of Lord Bacon, who, living a hundred years later, nevertheless

had access to sources of information not available to the modern student,

though his authority may easily be overrated. Speaking of Simon, he

says:--"It cannot be but that some great person, that knew particularly

and familiarly Edward Plantagenet, had a hand in the business, from whom

the priest might take his aim. That which is most probable out of the

preceding and subsequent acts is, that it was the queen-dowager from whom

this action had the principal source and motion; for certain it is that

she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing-chamber had

the fortunate conspiracy for the king against Richard III. been hatched,

which the king knew, and remembered, perhaps, but too well; and was at

this time extremely discontented with the king, thinking her daughter--as

the king handled the matter--not advanced but depressed; and none could

hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage play as she

could."

[Illustration: HENRY VII.]

But the most formidable and unwearied enemy of Henry VII. was Margaret,

the Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy. As the sister of Edward IV. and of

Richard, no circumstance could induce her to tolerate Henry Tudor, in her

eyes a low-born man, who had thrust the Yorkist line from the throne. To

her Lord Lovel had fled, and to her also fled the Earl of Lincoln. To her

the Irish party sent emissaries for aid; and she despatched 2,000 veteran

German troops, under a brave and experienced general, Martin Schwarz,

accompanied by the Earl of Lincoln.

The moment that Henry Tudor learned the flight of the Earl of Lincoln,

he set out on a progress through the counties of Essex, Suffolk,

and Norfolk, in which the chief interest of the earl lay. He was at

Kenilworth when news was brought him that the Earl of Lincoln and Lord

Lovel had landed with the pretended Edward VI., supported by Martin

Schwarz and his German legion, at the pile of Foudray, an old keep in the

southern extremity of Furness. Henry advanced by Coventry and Leicester

to Nottingham; Lincoln had already approached Newark. The royal army

advancing to oppose the whole force lost its way between Nottingham and

Newark, and there was such confusion in consequence, and such rumours

of the enemy being upon them, that numbers deserted. But five guides

were procured from Ratcliff-on-Trent, and soon afterwards the vanguard

of Henry's army, led by the Earl of Oxford, encountered the forces of

Lincoln at Stoke, a village near Newark. The battle lasted for three

hours, and was obstinately contested. The veteran Germans, under Schwarz,

fought till they were exterminated almost to a man. The Irish displayed

not the less valour; but, being only armed with darts and skeans--for

the English settlers had adopted the arms of the natives--were no match

for the royal cavalry. The whole of the troops of the insurgents,

expecting no mercy if they were taken, seemed prepared to perish rather

than to yield. Four thousand of the insurgents and 2,000 of the king's

best troops are said to have fallen in this desperate engagement; but

nearly all the leaders of the rebel army, the Earl of Lincoln, Sir

Thomas Broughton, the brave Schwarz, and the Lords Thomas and Maurice

Fitzgerald, having fallen, the victory on Henry's part became complete.

[Illustration: THE LAST STAND OF SCHWARZ AND HIS GERMANS]

The pretender Lambert Simnel and the priest Simon were captured by Sir

Robert Bellingham, one of the king's esquires; but nothing was seen

of Lord Lovel. He was believed to have escaped, but no traces of him

were discoverable; many thought that he had perished in attempting to

swim his horse across the Trent. But nearly two centuries afterwards

a subterranean chamber was discovered accidentally by some workmen at

Minster Lovel, in Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of his family. In this

chamber was seated a skeleton in a chair, with its head resting on a

table; and this was supposed to be the remains of this same Lord Lovel,

who had reached his house, and secreted himself in this apartment, where

he had perished by some unknown cause.

After the battle, Henry travelled northward to ascertain that all was

secure in the tract through which the insurgents had passed, and to

punish such as had aided the rebels, and those who just before the battle

had spread the rumour of his defeat. The royal punishments did not

consist in putting his enemies to death, but in fining them severely, for

Henry Tudor much preferred making a profit of a man to killing him. The

late insurrection had taught him that if he did not wish for a repetition

of it, he must concede something to the Yorkist party, and must pay

some respect to the queen. Accordingly, on the 25th of November, 1487,

Elizabeth was crowned with much state at Westminster.

Having thus made this _amende_ to public opinion, Henry, instead of

giving Simnel consequence by putting him to death, or making a State

prisoner of him in the Tower, turned him into his kitchen as a scullion,

thus showing his contempt of him. "He would not take his life," says Lord

Bacon, "taking him but as an image of wax that others had tempered and

moulded;" and considering that if he was made a continual spectacle, he

would be "a kind of remedy against the like enchantments of people in

time to come." The priest Simon he shut up in a secret prison, saying

he was but a tool, and did not know the depths of the plot. He even

professed to regret the death of the Earl of Lincoln, who, had his life

been spared, he said, "might have revealed to him the bottom of his

danger." In his peculiar way he threw much mystery over the matter, for

mystery was one of his greatest pleasures.

Having settled these matters, which he did on his own authority, Henry

summoned a Parliament to grant him supplies, and to increase those

supplies by bill of attainder against all those who had been engaged in

the late conspiracy. To prevent similar risings, he demanded that the law

should be rigorously put in force against the practice of maintenance.

This maintenance was the association of numbers of persons under a

particular chief or nobleman, whose badge or livery they wore, and to

whom they were bound by oath to support him in his private quarrels

against other noblemen. But the instrument was too convenient not to

be turned on occasion against the Crown, whenever rich chiefs took

up the opposite party, and by this means it was that such numbers of

troops could be brought at the shortest notice into the field against

the monarch. Various laws had been passed on this subject, and heavy

penalties decreed; but now it was ordained that, instead of calling

such offenders before the royal council, as had been the custom, a

particular Court should be established for the purpose. The chancellor,

the treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, or two of them, one bishop,

one lay peer, and the judges of the King's Bench and Common Pleas, were

empowered to summon all such persons before them, and to punish the

guilty just as if they had been convicted by ordinary course of law. This

was the origin of what came to be called the Court of the Star Chamber,

from the walls or ceiling of the room where it met being decorated with

stars.

The affairs on the Continent were now in a state which demanded the most

serious attention, but which were by no means likely to be settled to the

honour of the country by a monarch of the penurious character of Henry

VII. If ever a monarch was bound by gratitude to succour another prince,

it was Henry VII. He had been protected in Brittany from all the attempts

of the Yorkist monarch for years. The Duke Francis, who had been his

host and friend during his long exile, was now growing old. He appears

never to have been of a very vigorous mind, and now mind and body were

failing together. He had two daughters, and the hope of securing the

patrimony of the eldest, Anne, drew the attention of many suitors, the

chief of whom were Maximilian, King of the Romans; the Duke of Orleans,

the first prince of the blood in France; and the Count D'Albret, a

powerful chieftain, at the foot of the Pyrenees. But hostile alike to

all these wooers was Charles VIII. of France, who, though he was under

engagement to marry the daughter of Maximilian, and therefore apparently

debarred from the hand of Anne of Brittany, was resolved, if possible, to

secure her territory. In this dilemma, Francis sent repeated importunate

entreaties to Henry to come to his rescue. France, at the same time, sent

to him, praying him to be neutral, alleging that Charles was only seeking

to drive his revolted subjects out of Brittany. Henry was bound by honour

to give prompt succour to his old friend; he had received from Parliament

two-fifteenths for the purpose, and was urged by it to send efficient

aid to prevent France from seizing this important province. But Henry

could not find it in his heart to spend the money in active service; he

proposed to mediate between the parties. This suited the views of France

exactly, because while Henry was negotiating they could continue to press

on their victories. The poor Duke Francis was compelled to submit to a

treaty, in August, at Verger, by which he surrendered to the French all

the territory they had conquered, and was bound never again to call in

assistance from England or any other country, nor to marry either of

his daughters without the consent of the King of France. Having signed

this humiliating treaty, the duke died of a broken heart, on the 7th of

September, 1488, only three weeks afterwards.

The people of England received these tidings with undisguised

indignation. Twice had they voted large sums to enable their ungrateful

and pusillanimous king to aid his old benefactor and the ally of

England; twice had he put the money in his coffers, and sold the

honour of the country and the fortunes of the unfortunate ally to the

French, wholly insensible to honour or shame. But whilst the public

were foaming in wrath over this despicable conduct, the indefatigable

French were pressing on. Anne, the young orphan duchess, was a mere

child of only twelve years of age. Around her were contending rivals and

their adherents. But all this time the French were seizing town after

town. The news of this awoke such a fermentation in England, and Henry

was upbraided in such vehement terms for thus, as the sovereign of a

great people, sacrificing the honour of the nation, and permitting the

helpless orphan of his benefactor to become the prey of France, that he

was compelled to rouse himself. He determined to send ambassadors to

Maximilian, to his son, the Archduke Philip, to the Kings of Spain and

Portugal, inviting them to act in concert with him for the repression of

French ambition. Having taken this magnanimous, and, if it had really

been intended to follow it up vigorously, most admirable step, Henry

called a Parliament, and demanded more money to carry on the war.

The pretences of this huckstering king were now become too transparent

to deceive any one. All the money hitherto voted for a war that never

took place was still in Henry's coffers. The people thought that he ought

first to bring out that before he asked for more. Parliament, therefore,

made strong opposition, and finally reduced his demand of £100,000 to

£75,000. But, when they had voted, the indignant people refused to pay

it, considering that the selfish monarch had their cash already in hand.

Great disturbances arose in the endeavour to enforce the collection of

the tax. This manifested itself especially in the north, where Henry had

used such endeavours to soothe and win the inhabitants.

The Earl of Northumberland directed the collection to be enforced,

accompanying the command with such menaces as he deemed necessary to

procure obedience. But these had a contrary effect. The people flew

to arms, and, turning their vengeance first against the earl, as the

rigorous instrument of an imperious monarch, they stormed his house and

put him to death. They then declared war against the tyrant, as they

termed Henry, himself. Their leader was a fiery fellow of the common

order, named John à Chambre, but, as they assumed a formidable aspect,

Sir John Egremont, one of the Yorkist faction, put himself at their head.

Henry lost no time in despatching Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who

soon suppressed the insurrection, and hanged John à Chambre and some of

his accomplices. Sir John Egremont escaped to Flanders to the Duchess of

Burgundy.

Henry now sent over to Brittany a body of 6,000 men under Lord Willoughby

de Broke; but he limited their service to six months, which was, in fact,

to render them nearly useless, especially when they had instructions not

to fight, and he would not even afford that aid until he had exacted from

the poor orphan girl, the young duchess, the surrender of her two best

sea-ports in security of payment. He moreover compelled the duchess to

bind herself by the like oath to him as she had taken to the French king,

not to marry without his consent. Before the end of the year Anne found

herself invested by the French army in Rennes; and rather than fall a

helpless and humiliated captive into the hands of Charles, she consented

to marry him, having not a single soul left to stand by her in her

resolute opposition. She was married to Charles on the 13th of December,

1491, at Rennes, was crowned in the abbey church of St. Denis, and made

her entrance into Paris amid the acclamations of a vast multitude, who

regarded this event as one of the most auspicious which had ever happened

to France.

The rage of Maximilian may be imagined. He had lost Brittany, his

daughter had lost the throne of France, and he was duped and insulted in

the most egregious manner before all Europe. He made his complaints ring

far and wide, but they were only echoed by the laughter of his enemies,

and he proceeded to vow revenge by the assistance of Spain and England.

Henry was now bent, according to all appearance, on war. He was too

clear-sighted not to perceive the immense advantage France had obtained

over him in securing Brittany, and how the political foresight and

sagacity on which he prided himself had suffered from the paltry

promptings of his avarice. He therefore put on a most belligerent

attitude. He summoned a Parliament at Westminster, and addressed it in

the most heroic strain. He commented on the insolence of France, elated

with the success of her late perfidy, and on--what he no doubt felt more

deeply than anything else--her refusal to pay what he called the tribute

agreed by Louis XI. to be paid to Edward IV., and hitherto continued

to himself. Two-fifteenths were at once granted him, and the nobility

were on fire with the anticipation of realising all the glories and the

plunder of the past ages.

He availed himself of the paroxysm of the moment, not only to gather

in and garner the two-fifteenths newly granted, but the remains of the

benevolence voted last session. Whilst the fresh tax fell on the nation

generally, this fell on the monied and commercial capitalists. London

alone furnished £10,000 of it or £100,000 of our money. The wily old

archbishop, Morton, instructed the commissioners to employ this dilemma,

which was called "Morton's fork." They were to urge upon people who lived

in a modest and careful way, that they _must_ be rich in consequence of

their parsimony; on those who indulged in expensive abodes and styles of

living, that they _must_ be opulent, because they had so much to expend.

To afford ample time for harvesting these riches, Henry found perpetual

causes for delaying his expedition. The nobles were already crowding to

his standard with their vassals, and impatient to set out, but Henry

had always some plausible excuse for lingering. At one time it was the

unsafe state of Scotland, and four months were occupied in negotiating

an extension of the truce; then it was the necessity of contracting for

fresh levies of troops. These troops, however, were ready in June and

July, but still they were not allowed to move. "The truth was," says

Bacon, "that though the king showed great forwardness for a war, not

only to his Parliament and Court, but to his Privy Council, except the

two bishops (Fox and Morton), and a few more, yet, nevertheless, in his

secret intentions, he had no purpose to go through with any war upon

France. But the truth was, that he did but traffic with that war to make

money."

At length, in the beginning of October, 1492, he landed at Calais, with

a fine army of 25,000 foot, and 1,600 horse, which he gave in command

to the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Oxford. This was a force capable

of striking an alarming blow, but the whole affair was a sham. In fact,

Henry had entered into a treaty of peace before he had set out, and the

only difficulty now was how to get out of the war without incurring too

much resentment at home. To guard against this, the odium of the abortive

expedient must be carefully removed from himself to other parties. The

machinery for this was already prepared. His ambassadors appeared in the

camp at Boulogne, informing them that their visit to his previous ally

Maximilian had been useless; he was incapable of joining him. These were

followed by others from Spain, bringing the intelligence that Ferdinand

had concluded a peace with France, Roussillon and Cerdagne being ceded to

him by Charles. But with Henry's fine army, and the defenceless state of

France, the defection of these allies, from whom little or nothing had

been expected, would have scarcely cost him a thought had he been a Henry

V. As it was, after all his boasts, it was not even for him to propose

an abandonment of the enterprise, and therefore, the Marquis of Dorset

and twenty-three other persons of distinction were employed to present to

him a request that he would also make a peace with France. They urged,

as they were instructed for this purpose, the defection of these allies,

the approach of winter, the difficulty of obtaining supplies at Calais at

that season, and the obstinacy of the siege of Boulogne. All these were

circumstances that had been foreseen from the first, and treated with

indifference, as they deserved to be; but now Henry affected to listen

to the desires of his army, and sent off the Bishop of Exeter and the

Lord Daubeney to confer with the Marshal de Cordes, who had been sent as

plenipotentiary on the part of Charles to Étaples. They soon returned,

bringing the rough draft of a treaty, by which peace and amity were to

be maintained betwixt the two sovereigns during their lives, and a year

afterwards. Even this Henry affected to decline, and only consented to

give way at the earnest entreaty of his already-mentioned four-and-twenty

officers.

After having thus assumed all this pretence to exonerate himself from

censure, Henry signed a peace on the following terms:--Charles was to

retain Brittany for ever, and he was to pay Henry 620,000 crowns in gold

for the money advanced by Henry on account of Brittany and his present

expenses, and 125,000 crowns in gold as arrears of the pension paid to

Edward IV. by Louis XI. He was also to continue this pension of 25,000

crowns to Henry and his heirs. The whole amount which Henry sacked was

745,000 crowns, equal to £400,000 of our present money. The members of

his council, who openly acted the part of petitioners of this peace, are

said not only to have been instructed by Henry to perform this obnoxious

duty, but to have been gained by the bribes of the French king, who was

anxious to make short work of it, that he might proceed on an expedition

which he had set his mind upon against Naples. They went about declaring

that it was the most glorious peace that any king of England ever made

with France, and that if Henry's subjects presumed to censure it, they

were ready to take the blame upon themselves.

[Illustration: PENNY OF HENRY VII.]

[Illustration: ANGEL OF HENRY VII.]

Having used these precautions to ward off the reproaches of his subjects,

Henry ratified the peace on the 6th of November, and led back his army

to England. There, though he had the money safely in his chests, the

disappointment and indignation of the people were extreme, and tended

to diminish his sordid satisfaction. The people protested that he had

been trading on the honour of the nation, and had sold its interests and

reputation for his own vile gain, and his enemies did not neglect to

avail themselves of his unpopularity. During the past year, a young man

had landed in Cork, of a singularly fascinating exterior and insinuating

address. He represented himself to be no other than the Duke of York,

the younger of the two princes who were supposed to have been murdered

in the Tower. He was a fine young man, apparently exactly of the age of

the Duke of York, and bearing a striking likeness to Edward IV. "Such

a mercurial," says Bacon, "as the like hath seldom been known; and he

had such a crafty and bewitching fashion, both to move pity and induce

belief, as was like a kind of fascination or enchantment." What would

appear to have been the real story of this remarkable pretender, so far

as we can gather from the records of the time, is this:--

Margaret, the Duchess-Dowager of Burgundy, having played off Lambert

Simnel, devised this scheme, or was supplied with it by the Yorkist

refugees at her Court, who had immediate and constant communion with

the heads of the York faction in England. A young man was industriously

sought after who should well represent the Duke of York, though she knew

him to be dead. Such a youth was found in the son, or reputed son, of

one John Osbeck, or Warbeck, a renegade Jew of Tournay. This Warbeck

had lived and carried on business in the time of Edward IV., and had

dealings with the king, who was so free with him that the Jew prevailed

on him to become godfather to his child, who was called Peter, and whose

name became converted into the diminutive Peterkin or Perkin. Others

assert that Warbeck's wife had been amongst the numerous favourites of

Edward, and that this Perkin was really his son--whence the striking

resemblance, the cleverness and liveliness of his character. Warbeck had

returned to Flanders, and there, in course of time, his son had attracted

the attention of the Yorkist conspirators as the very youth, in all

respects, for their purpose. He was introduced to the duchess, who found

him already familiar with the whole story of Edward's Court from the past

affairs and position there of his parents.

[Illustration: NOBLE OF HENRY VII.]

[Illustration: SOVEREIGN OF HENRY VII.]

The scheme being now matured and the chief actor ready, they only waited

for the true moment for his appearance. That came in the prospect

of Henry being involved in war with France. As soon as this seemed

inevitable, the pretended Duke of York landed in Ireland. The York

faction was still strong in that country, and, despite the failure of

the former pretender, Simnel, the Irish were ready, to a certain extent,

to embrace another claimant of Henry's crown. He landed at Cork, where

the mayor and others of that city received him as the true Richard

Plantagenet, as, no doubt, they had previously agreed to do. Many of the

credulous people flocked after him, but the more prudent stood aloof.

He wrote to the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, inviting them to join his

standard, but those powerful noblemen kept a cautious distance. Kildare

had been disgraced by Henry for his reception of Simnel, and dreaded

his more deadly vengeance in case of a second failure. But Warbeck,

undismayed, spread everywhere the exciting story of his escape from the

cruelty of his uncle Richard, and was gradually making an impression on

the imaginative mind of Ireland, when a summons came to a new scene.

Charles VIII. of France was now menaced by Henry with invasion. He knew

the man too well to doubt the real object of his menace, and the power of

money to avert it, but it was of consequence to reduce the bribe as much

as possible; and every instrument which promised to assist in effecting

that was most valuable. Such an instrument was this self-styled Duke

of York, who had suddenly appeared in Ireland. The watchful Duchess of

Burgundy is said to have adroitly turned Charles's attention to this

mysterious individual through the agency of one Frion, a man who had been

a Secretary of Henry, but who had been won over by his enemies. Charles

caught at the idea; an invitation was instantly despatched to Perkin

Warbeck to hasten to the French Court, where he was "to hear of something

to his advantage," and he was received by the king as the undoubted

Duke of York and true monarch of England. Perkin's person, talents, and

address, being worthy of a real prince, won him the admiration of all

who approached him; and not only the Court and capital, but the whole of

France, soon rang with praise of the accomplishments, the adventures,

and the unmerited misfortunes of this last of the Plantagenets. The king

settled upon him a princely income; a magnificent abode was assigned him,

and a body-guard befitting a royal personage was conferred upon him, of

which the Lord of Concressault was made captain.

The news of this cordial reception of the reputed Duke of York by the

French Court flew to England, and Sir George Neville, Sir John Taylor,

and above a hundred gentlemen hastened to Paris, and offered to him

their devoted services. This decided and rapidly-growing demonstration

had the effect which Charles contemplated. Henry was greatly alarmed,

and hastened to close the negotiations for peace. These once signed,

the puppet had done its work in France. Henry made earnest demands to

have Warbeck handed over to him, but Charles, who, no doubt, was bound

by agreement with the Duchess of Burgundy to refuse any such surrender,

declared that to do so would be contrary to his honour; but he gave the

pretender a hint to quit the kingdom, and he retired to the Court of

Burgundy.

The duchess now heaped on Perkin all the marks of affection and the

honours which she would have deemed due to her own nephew. She ordered

every one to give him the homage belonging to a real king; she appointed

him a guard of thirty halberdiers, and styled him the "White Rose of

England." On all occasions her conduct towards him was that of an

affectionate aunt, who regarded him as the head of her family, and the

heir of the brightest crown in Europe.

It is not to be supposed that the tempest which was gathering around

Henry had escaped his attention. On the contrary, he was aware of all

that was passing, and with the caution and concealment of his character,

he was at work to counteract the operations of his enemies. The first

object with him was to convince the public that the real Duke of York

had perished at the same time as his brother, Edward V. Nothing, he

concluded, would be so effectual for this purpose as the evidence of

those who had always been held to be concerned in the death of the young

princes. Of five implicated, according to universal belief, two only

now survived, namely, Sir James Tyrell--who had taken the place of Sir

Robert Brackenbury, Lieutenant of the Tower, during the night of the

murder--and John Dighton, one of the actual assassins. These two were

secured and interrogated, and their evidence was precisely that which

we have stated when relating the murder of the princes. The bodies,

therefore, were sought for, but as the chaplain was dead who was supposed

to have witnessed their removal, according to the order of Richard III.,

they could not then be found and produced. The testimony of Tyrell and

Dighton, however, was published and circulated as widely as possible,

and these two miscreants, after their full and frank avowal of the

perpetration of this diabolical murder, were, to the disgrace of the

king and of public justice, again allowed to go free. Everyone, however,

must perceive at once how important it was to Henry that the real

witnesses of that murder should exist, and be forthcoming to confound any

one pretending to be either of these princes.

Henry next applied to the Archduke Philip, the son of Maximilian and

Mary of Burgundy, and now sovereign of the Netherlands in his own

right, to deliver up to him the impostor, Warbeck, who, he contended,

was entertained in his dominions contrary to the existing treaties, and

the amity betwixt the two sovereigns. But Margaret had the influence to

render his application abortive. Philip professed to have every desire

to oblige his great ally, Henry of England, but he pleaded that Margaret

was sole ruler in her own states, and, though he might advise her in

this matter, he could not control her. Henry resented the polite evasion

by stopping all commercial intercourse between England and the Low

Countries, by banishing all Flemings from his dominions, and recalling

his own subjects from Flanders; and Philip retaliated by issuing similar

edicts.

In 1494, several Yorkist lords were arrested and executed, but there

remained a conspirator far higher than any who had yet been unveiled--a

conspirator where it was least expected, in the immediate vicinity of

the throne, and in the person who more than all others, perhaps, had

contributed to place Henry upon it. His name stood in the secret list of

traitors furnished by spies, but he had been left for a more striking

and dramatic discovery, for a dénouement calculated to produce the most

startling and profound impression.

After the festivities of Christmas the king took up his residence in the

Tower, where he held his council on the 7th of January, 1495. If there

was one man more distinguished than another by the royal favour in that

august circle, he was Stanley, Lord Chamberlain. Sir William Stanley

had burst upon Richard III. at Bosworth Field, at the critical moment,

slain his standard-bearer, and, by his followers, killed the tyrant. His

brother, Lord Stanley, had put the crown of the fallen monarch on Henry's

head. For this he had been created Earl of Derby, and had been allowed

to ally himself to the throne by the marriage of Henry's mother, the

Countess of Richmond. Sir William had been made Lord Chamberlain, and

both brothers had been glutted, as it were, with the wealth and estates

of proscribed families. There were no men--not even Fox and Morton--who

were supposed to stand so high, not merely in the favour, but in the

friendship of Henry. He was suddenly arrested at the council chamber and

executed, his vast wealth passing to the Crown.

The fall of Stanley was a paralysing blow to the partisans of Warbeck.

They saw that even that great nobleman, while apparently living in the

very centre and blaze of royal favour, had been surrounded by spies

who watched all his actions, heard his most secret communications, and

carried them all to the king. No man who was in any degree implicated

felt himself safe. Henry's cautious and severe temper, while it made him

hated, made him proportionately feared. Assured by the success which had

attended all his measures, Henry every day displayed more and more the

grasping avarice of his disposition, and accusations and heavy fines fell

thickly around. He fined Sir William Capel, Alderman of London, for some

offence, £2,743; and, though he failed to secure the whole, he obtained

£1,615. Encouraged by this, he repeated the like attempts; and, while he

depressed the nobility, he especially countenanced unprincipled lawyers,

as the ready tools of his rapacity. Whilst this conduct, however, kept

alive the rancour of many influential people, it rendered the common

people passive; for they escaped the oppressions of many petty tyrants,

who were kept in check by the one great one. Warbeck's party, therefore,

was much disabled. It was now three years since he made his appearance,

but, with the exception of his brief visit to Ireland, he had attempted

nothing in Henry's dominions. But the Flemings, who were smarting under

the restrictions put upon their trade with England, began to murmur

loudly, and the Archduke Philip to remonstrate warmly with Margaret on

account of the countenance given to the English insurgents.

Under these circumstances it was necessary for Warbeck and his adherents

to make an effort of some kind. Taking advantage, therefore, of the

absence of Henry on a visit to his mother at Latham House, in Lancashire,

Warbeck and a few hundred followers made a descent in July on the

coast of Kent, near Deal. It was hoped that Henry's severity would

have made numbers ready to join them. The people, indeed, assembled

under the guidance of some gentlemen of property, and, professing to

favour Warbeck, invited him to come on shore. But he, or those about

him, observing that the forces collected had nothing of that tumultuous

impetuosity about them which usually characterises insurgents in earnest,

kept aloof, and the men of Kent perceiving that they could not draw

Warbeck into the snare, fell on his followers already on land, and,

besides killing many of them, took 169 prisoners. The rest managed to

get on board again, and Warbeck, seeing what sort of a reception England

gave him, sailed back with all speed to Flanders. The prisoners were tied

together like teams of cattle, and driven to London, where they were all

condemned and executed to a man, in various places, some at London and

Wapping, some on the coasts of Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Norfolk, where

they were gibbeted, as a warning to any fresh adventurers who might

appear on those shores.

Flanders was now become no durable place of sojourn for Perkin and his

party. The Flemings would no longer submit to the interruption of their

trade; and the archduke entered into a treaty with Henry, which contained

a stipulation that Philip should restrain the Duchess Margaret from

harbouring any of the king's enemies, and that the two princes should

expel from their territories all the enemies of each other. This treaty

was ratified on the 24th of February, 1496, and thereupon Warbeck betook

himself to Ireland. But there he found a sensible change had taken place

since his former visit. The king had sent over Sir Edward Poynings as

lord-deputy, who had taken such measures that the people were much

satisfied. On landing at Cork, therefore, the Irish refused to recognise

their late idol, and from Cork he sailed away to Scotland. There a new

and surprising turn of fortune awaited him. For a long time his interest

had been on the decline. In Flanders the public had grown weary of him;

in England they had endeavoured to entrap him; from Ireland they had

repulsed him. He is said to have presented letters of recommendation from

Charles VIII. of France, and from his great patroness the Duchess-Dowager

of Burgundy; and James IV. of Scotland received him with open arms.

James IV. of Scotland was a brave, generous, and patriotic monarch. When

Henry offered him his daughter Margaret, he, therefore, unceremoniously

rejected the offer. The disposition which Henry was said to have shown

to encourage his subjects, during the truce, to molest the Scottish

merchantmen at the very mouth of the Forth, was highly resented by

James, who supported his admiral--Wood of Largo--in severely chastising

the pirates, and did not fail to warn Henry that such practices must

not be repeated. The dislike which James entertained for the insidious

character of Henry--who began that system of bribing the nobles around

the throne of Scotland which was never discontinued so long as a Tudor

reigned, and which ended in the destruction of Mary, Queen of Scots--was

violently aggravated by a base attempt of Henry in 1490. This was no

other than a scheme to seize and carry off James to England, which failed

ignominiously.

In this temper of the Scottish King, nothing could come more opportunely

than such a person as Perkin Warbeck. James had, from the first moment

of mounting his throne, been careful to strengthen his alliances with

the whole European continent. With France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and

Flanders, his intercourse, both official and mercantile, was active and

constant. Of course, James was kept in full information of all that was

agitating England. With the Duchess of Burgundy, the inveterate enemy of

Henry, it is clearly provable that James was in secret correspondence

only five months after his accession. In 1488, even, there were busy

messengers and heralds passing to and fro betwixt Flanders, Ireland, and

Scotland.

From these circumstances, which are attested by the "Treasurer's

Accounts," and other records of Scotland, it is manifest that James was

intimately informed of everything which could be known about Warbeck.

There could be no mistake made by James in his reception of that

personage, when, in November, 1495, he presented himself at the palace of

Stirling. Whatever James did he did with his eyes wide open and his mind

fully made up. Yet from the very first he received him apparently with

the most undoubting faith as to his being the true Plantagenet.

Warbeck was welcomed into Scotland with much state and rejoicing as the

veritable Duke of York. James addressed him as "cousin," and celebrated

tournaments and other courtly gaieties in his honour. The reputed

prince, by his noble appearance, the simple dignity of his manners, and

the romance of his story and supposed misfortunes, everywhere excited

the highest admiration. James made a grand progress with him through

his dominions, and beheld him wherever he appeared produce the most

favourable impression. If James did not himself really believe Warbeck

to be the Duke of York before he came to Scotland, his conduct during

his abode there seems to have convinced him of it. At no time was he

known to express a doubt of it, and on all occasions he spoke and acted

as if morally certain of it. Nothing could be more convincing than his

giving him to wife one of the most beautiful and high-born women of

Scotland, Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, and

grand-daughter of James I. James now mustered his forces for the grand

expedition which he hoped would drive Henry from the throne of England,

and establish there the son of Edward IV., in the person of Warbeck.

[Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen._)]

Meantime, Henry VII. was diligently at work at his favourite plans of

bribing and undermining. He had an active agent in Lord Bothwell, whom

James had weakly forgiven for his numerous conspiracies. By his means

Henry had won over the king's brothers, the Duke of Ross, the Earl of

Buchan, and the Bishop of Moray. These traitors engaged to do everything

in their power to defeat the expedition. The Duke of Ross promised to

put himself under the protection of the King of England the moment his

brother crossed the borders. Nor did the plot stop there. Again there was

a scheme to seize James at night in his tent, suggested by Henry, and

entered into by Bothwell, Buchan, and Wyat, an English emissary. This

disgraceful plot was defeated by the vigilance of the royal guard, but

not the less actively did the paid spies of Henry Tudor, including some

of the most powerful barons in Scotland, labour to defeat the success of

the enterprise. They accompanied the army only with the hope of betraying

it, while their efforts were essentially aided by the remonstrances of

more honest counsellors, who doubted the wisdom of the expedition, and

did all they could to dissuade James from it.

Burning with resentment at the base and insidious attempts of Henry to

disturb the security of his government, and to seize upon his person,

and coveting the glory of restoring the last noble scion of a great

race to the throne of his ancestors, James was deaf alike to warnings

of secret treason or more public danger. He made his last muster of his

forces at Ellam Kirk, near the English border and, proclaiming war on

Henry, marched forward. Warbeck, as Richard Duke of York, at the same

time issued a proclamation calling upon all true Englishmen to assemble

beneath the banner of the true inheritor of the crown. He denounced Henry

Tudor as a usurper, and as the murderer of Sir William Stanley, Sir Simon

Montfort, and others of the ancient nobility; he charged him with having

invaded the liberties and the franchises of both Church and people; and

with having plundered the subjects by heavy and illegal impositions. He

pledged himself to remedy all these abuses; to restore and defend the

rights and privileges of the Church, the nobles, the corporations, and

the commerce and manufactures of the country. He related the dangers

through which he had passed since his escape from the Tower to this

moment, and he set a price of a thousand pounds in money, and land to the

value of a hundred marks per annum, for the capture or destruction of

Henry Tudor.

But however judiciously the proclamation was drawn up, James was

confounded as he advanced to see that it produced not the slightest

effect. In vain had it been protested in the proclamation that James came

only as the friend of the rightful King of England; that he sought no

advantage to himself--though he had really bargained for the restoration

of Berwick, and was to be paid 1,000 marks for the expenses of the

war--and that he would retire the moment a sufficient English force

appeared in the field. No such force was likely to present itself. If

Warbeck had met with no success when supported by Englishmen, it was

not to be expected when followed by an army of the hereditary foes of

the kingdom--Scots and French, backed by Germans, Flemings, and other

foreigners.

When James saw that, instead of being welcomed as deliverers, they were

avoided, and that the expedition was altogether hopeless, he gave way to

his wrath, and began to plunder the country, or to permit his troops to

do it. Warbeck remonstrated against the devastations committed on the

English with all the ardour of a true prince, declaring that he would

rather lose the throne than gain it by the sufferings of his people. But

James replied that his cousin of York was too considerate of the welfare

of a nation that hesitated to acknowledge him either as king or subject.

All this time the diligent Bothwell was duly informing Henry of the state

of the Scottish camp, and of everything said and done in it. He now

assured him that the Scottish army would soon beat a retreat, for that

the inhabitants, in expectation of the visit, had driven off all their

cattle, and removed their stores; so that the army was on the point of

starvation. This was soon verified. The Scots, finding no supporters,

about the end of the year retreated into their own country.

The invasion from Scotland afforded Henry another pretext for raising

more money. He summoned a Parliament in the February of 1497, to which he

uttered bitter complaints of the inroad and devastations of the Scots;

of the troubles created by the impostor, and the manifold insults to the

crown and nation. All this was now apparently blown over; but Parliament

gratified the king by voting £120,000, together with two-fifteenths.

Happy in the prospect of such supplies, Henry recked little of Warbeck or

the Scots; but the tax roused the especial wrath of the Cornish people,

who, knowing that the king only wanted to add their money to his already

immense and useless hoards, wanted to know what they had to do with

inroads of the Scots, who were never likely to come near them, and who

had retired of themselves without so much as waiting for the sight of

an army. This excitement of the brave and industrious, but hard-living

Cornish men was fanned into a flame by Michael Joseph, a farrier of

Bodmin, and one Thomas Flammock, an attorney, who assured the people that

the tax was totally illegal, though voted by Parliament; for that the

northern counties were bound by the tenures of their estates to defend

that frontier; and that if they submitted to the avarice of Henry and his

ministers there would be no end to it.

Flammock told them that they must deliver the king a petition, seconded

by such numbers as to give it authority; but at the same time he assured

them that to procure the concurrence of the rest of the kingdom they

must conduct themselves with all order, and refrain from committing any

injuries to person or property, demonstrating that they had only the

public good in view. Armed with bills, bows, axes, and other country

weapons that they could command, they marched into Devonshire 16,000

strong, and called on the people to accompany them, and demand the heads

of Archbishop Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, who were declared to be the

advisers of the obnoxious impost. At Taunton they made an example of an

insolent and overbearing commissioner of the tax of the name of Perin. At

Wells they were joined by Lord Audley, a man of an ancient family, but

said to be of a vain and ambitious character.

Proud of having a nobleman at their head, they marched through Salisbury

and Winchester into Surrey, and thence to Kent, the people of which,

Flammock told them, had in all ages been noted for their independence

and patriotism, and were sure to join them. They pitched their camp on

Blackheath, near Eltham, but not a man joined them. The people of Kent

had their causes of complaint; but they had lately shown what was their

spirit by repelling Perkin Warbeck, and they were too enlightened to join

in the expedition.

Henry had now received the new levies raised to oppose any further motion

of the Scots, and he sent them forward to attack and disperse the rebels.

He always regarded Saturday as his fortunate day; therefore, on Saturday,

the 22nd of June, 1497, he gave the order for the attack. He divided

his forces into three divisions. The first, under Lord Daubeney, pushed

forward to attack the insurgents in front; the second, under the Earl

of Oxford, was to take a compass, and assail them in the rear; and the

king himself took post with the third division in St. George's Fields,

to secure the city. To throw the insurgents off their guard, he had

given out that he should not take the field for some days; and to give

probability to this notion, he did not send out his advanced forces till

the latter part of the day. Lord Daubeney beat an advanced guard of the

rebels from Deptford Bridge, and before the main body was prepared to

receive him, he charged them with fury. Though they were brave men, and

16,000 strong, thus taken at advantage, and naturally ill-disciplined,

ill-armed, and destitute of cavalry and artillery, they were soon broken

and compelled to fly. Two thousand of them were slain, and 1,500 made

prisoners. The prisoners Henry gave up to the captors, who allowed them

to ransom themselves for a few shillings each.

Lord Audley, Flammock, and Joseph only were executed. The peer was

beheaded, the commoners were hanged; and Joseph seemed to glory in the

distinction, saying he should figure in history. Henry on this occasion

displayed great clemency, which some have ascribed to his desire to

make a good impression on the Cornish people; others for joy that Lord

Daubeney had escaped, for at one time he was surrounded by the enemy

but was soon rescued. But the most probable reason was that assigned by

Lord Bacon:--"That the harmless behaviour of this people that came from

the west of England to the east, without mischief almost, or spoil of

the country, did somewhat mollify him, and move him to compassion; or,

lastly, that he made a great difference between people that did rebel

upon wantonness, and them that did rebel upon want."

James of Scotland seized on the opportunity created by the Cornish

insurrection to make a fresh inroad into England. He laid siege to the

castle of Norham, and plundered the country round. Henry despatched the

Earl of Surrey, with an army of 20,000 men, to drive back the Scots,

and punish them by carrying the war of devastation into their country.

As Surrey advanced, James retired, and Surrey, following him across

the Tweed, took and demolished the little castle of Ayton, ravaged the

borders, and returned to Berwick. These useless and worse than useless

raids, with no hope of permanent advantage on either side, but only of

mischief to the unoffending inhabitants on both, were worthy only of the

most savage and unenlightened times. The spies of Henry, however, soon

informed him that James was really sick of the war, and he repeated the

offer made before of the hand of his daughter Margaret. This he made

through the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro d'Ayala, who came forward

as a friendly mediator, thus sparing both kings the humiliation of

making the first move. D'Ayala found James quite disposed for peace,

but in a somewhat cavalier humour as to the terms. By the advice of

D'Ayala, commissioners were appointed to meet at Ayton, where, under the

management of Fox, Bishop of Durham, on the part of England, a truce was

agreed upon to last for the lives of the two kings, and a year after the

death of the longer liver. Though agreed upon, this important truce was

not ratified for some years afterwards.

Meantime, James privately admonished Warbeck to quit the kingdom, as he

could no longer assist him, and his presence would only tend to endanger

the truce. Warbeck is said to have received this intimation with much

true dignity and good feeling. He thanked the king for the great effort

he had made on his account, for all the honours and favours that he had

conferred upon him, and for which he declared he should ever remain

deeply grateful. A vessel was prepared for his departure at Ayr, and

every comfort was provided for his accommodation which James could have

offered to the true prince. His beautiful and accomplished wife would not

be left behind--a proof that she was really attached to him, whatever

she might think of his pretensions. She quitted rank, fortune, a high

position in the Scottish Court, to embrace with him a homeless life and a

dark prospect. Flanders was closed to Perkin by the fresh league betwixt

that country and England. Ireland was a more than dubious resort, yet

thither he turned his prow, and landed at Cork on the 30th of July, 1497,

with about 100 followers. The attempt to rouse again the enthusiasm of

Ireland was vain; but at this juncture the last gleam of Warbeck's waning

fortune seemed to fall upon him.

The Cornish rebels, let off so easily by Henry, had returned to their

own county, proclaiming by the way that the king had not dared to put

them to death because the whole of his subjects were in the same state

of discontent. The people of Cornwall and Devon, reassured by this,

again took up arms against the commissioners, who were still collecting

the tax with great severity, and, it is said, despatched a message to

Warbeck to come over and head them. On the 7th of September, 1497, he

accordingly landed at Whitsand Bay, with four or five small barques, and

his 100 fighting men. Being joined by 3,000 of the insurgents at Bodmin,

he issued a proclamation similar to his former one. Bodmin was the native

place of Michael Joseph, their great orator and leader, and the people

there were burning to revenge his death. Warbeck set out on his march

towards Devonshire, and thousands of those who had lost friends and

relations in the bloody battle of Blackheath joined him on the way. He

sent his wife to Mount St. Michael for security, and directing his course

towards Exeter, he invested that city on the 17th of September with a

rude, wild force of about 10,000 men. He announced himself as Richard IV.

of England, and called on the inhabitants to surrender; but, having sent

notification of his approach to King Henry, they determined to defend

themselves, if needful, till succour arrived.

[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT, CORNWALL.]

Warbeck had no artillery or engines of any kind to carry on a siege, he

therefore attempted to break down the gates. At the one he was repulsed

with considerable loss, the other he managed to burn down, but the

citizens availed themselves of the fire, feeding it as it failed, till

they had dug a deep trench behind the flames. When, the next morning,

Warbeck returned to force a passage by that gate, the citizens received

him with such spirit that they slew 200 of his men, and daunted the rest.

Assistance was now also flowing in from the country to the city, and

Warbeck was in danger of being attacked both in front and rear. Seeing

this, he demanded a suspension of hostilities, and, depressed by this

failure, his Devonshire followers began rapidly to fall away, and steal

home as quickly as they could. His Cornish adherents, however, more

intrepid, encouraged him to persevere, and vowed that they would perish

in his cause. In this state of desperation the pretender marched on

towards Taunton, where he arrived on the 20th of September. The country

people on their way, smarting under the infliction of the hated tax,

wished them success, but did not attempt to help them.

[Illustration: LADY CATHERINE GORDON BEFORE HENRY VII. (_See p._ 94.)]

At Taunton, instead of any encouragement, they met the vanguard of the

royal army, under the command of Lord Daubeney, the lord chamberlain, and

Lord Broke, the steward of the household. The Duke of Buckingham was just

behind with a second division, and Henry was declared to be following

with a still larger force. The brave Cornish men, scarcely clothed, and

still worse armed, shrank not a moment from the hopeless combat. They

vowed to perish to a man in behalf of their newly-adopted king, and

Warbeck, with an air as if he would lead them into battle in the morning,

rode along their lines encouraging them, and made all ready for the

attack.

But Warbeck, who had never shown any want of courage, perceived the

utter madness of contending with his undisciplined followers against

such overwhelming odds, and in the night he mounted a fleet steed and

rode off. In the morning the Cornish men, seeing themselves without a

leader, submitted to the king, and, with the exception of a few of the

ringleaders, they were dismissed and returned homewards as best they

might. Meanwhile, Lord Daubeney despatched 500 horsemen in pursuit of

Warbeck, to prevent, if possible, his entrance into sanctuary; but the

fugitive succeeded in reaching the monastery of Beaulieu, in the New

Forest.

Henry sent a number of horsemen, in all haste, to St. Michael's Mount, in

Cornwall, to obtain possession of the Lady Catherine Gordon, the wife of

Warbeck. This they easily accomplished, and brought her to the king, on

entering whose presence she blushed and burst into tears. Henry received

her kindly--touched, for once in his life, with tenderness, by beauty

in distress; or, probably, bearing in mind that the lady was the near

kinswoman of the King of Scots, with whom he was desirous to stand well.

He sent her to the queen, by whom she was most cordially received, and in

whose court she remained attached to her service. She was still called

the White Rose of Scotland, on account of her beauty. Lady Gordon was

afterwards, it appears, three times married, but lies buried by the side

of her second husband, Sir Matthew Cradock, in Swansea church.

Henry proceeded to Exeter, where he had the ringleaders of the Cornish

insurrection brought in procession before him, with halters round their

necks. Some of them he hanged, the rest he pardoned; but he, at the

same time, appointed commissioners to proceed into the country through

which Perkin had passed, and to fine all such people of property as

had furnished him with aid or refreshment. They did not confine their

scrutiny to those who had assisted Perkin in his march, but extended it

to all who had relieved the famishing fugitives; "so that," says Bacon,

"their severity did much obscure the king's mercy in sparing of blood,

with the bleeding of so much treasure." They extorted altogether £10,000.

The next business was to get Warbeck out of his sanctuary and into the

hands of the king. Beaulieu was surrounded by an armed force, and all

attempts at escape made impossible. Some of Henry's council urged him to

omit all ceremony, and take the pretender from the sanctuary by force;

but this he declined, preferring to lure him thence by fair promises.

After hesitating for some time, Warbeck at length threw himself upon the

king's mercy. Henry then set out to London with his captive in his train.

Warbeck rode in the king's suite through the city, along Cheapside,

Cornhill, and to the Tower, and thence to Westminster. As the king had

promised him his life, he kept his word. He was repeatedly examined by

the Privy Council, but it seems as if something had transpired there

which Henry deemed better concealed, for a profound silence was preserved

on the subject of these disclosures. So far from even being degraded,

like Lambert Simnel, to some menial occupation, Warbeck was suffered to

enjoy a certain degree of liberty, and was treated as a gentleman. The

probability is, that the king satisfied himself that this mysterious

personage was in reality a son of Edward IV., by the handsome Jewess,

Catherine de Faro, his birth being in Flanders, and agreeing exactly with

the time of Edward's exile there. This might account for his admirable

support of the character of a prince, for his confidence in his assertion

of it for so many years, and the power he had of winning the strong

attachment of persons of the highest rank and education. If this were

true, he was, moreover, the queen's brother, though an illegitimate one,

and might win the interest of herself and sisters by his resemblance in

person, and in spirit and ambition, to her father.

But however this might be, he was too dangerous a person to be allowed

to get loose again. He lived at Court under a strict surveillance, and

he grew so weary of it, that he contrived to make his escape on the

8th of June, 1498. The alarm was instantly given; numbers of persons

were out in pursuit of him; every road by which he might escape to sea

was vigilantly beset, and the unhappy man, finding himself pressed on

all sides, surrendered himself to the Prior of Sheen, near Richmond.

The prior exercised the right of sanctuary possessed by the house, and

refused to give him up to the king, except under pledge that his life

should be spared. Henry agreed, but he confirmed the public opinion,

which, excited by the mystery of the Court, fully believed Warbeck a son

of Edward's, by now endeavouring to degrade him, and to fix upon him the

old story. For this purpose he compelled him to sit in the stocks two

whole days, on the 14th of June at Westminster Hall, and on the 15th

in Cheapside, and there to read aloud to the people a confession made

up of the account of him published in Henry's former proclamation, but

with some very contradictory additions. This confession was then printed

and circulated amongst the people, but failed entirely to satisfy any

one. When this bitter purgatory had been passed through, the bitterest

conceivable to a man of Warbeck's character, pretensions, and superior

mind, he was committed to the Tower.

Warbeck had not been long in the Tower when there was an attempt to

liberate the Earl of Warwick, who was still in confinement there; and

it failed only through the conspirators not having properly informed

themselves of the real quarter in which he was kept. Soon after that

a fresh plot was set on foot for the same object. In this the King of

France was said to be concerned. It was said that he had declared his

regret for ever having countenanced the usurpation of Henry Tudor, and

that he offered money, ships, and even troops, to the friends of Warwick

to enable them to release him, and place him on the throne. The Yorkist

malcontents were once more active. They wrote to the retainers of the

late Duke of Clarence, the father of Warwick, and to Lady Warwick,

to come forward and see justice done to the oppressed prince; and an

invitation was sent from the Court of France to a distinguished leader

of the house of York to go over to that country and assume the command

of the expedition. This also failing, a report was then spread of the

death of the Earl of Warwick: then it was said that he had escaped, and a

person of the name of Ralph Wulford, or Wilford, the son of a shoemaker

in Sussex, was taught by one Patrick, an Augustinian friar, to personate

the earl.

Whether the Yorkists were determined to give Henry no repose, but to

haunt and harass him with a perpetual succession of impostors, or

whether Henry himself planned this latter improbable scheme as a pretext

for getting rid of the Earl of Warwick altogether, seems never to have

been satisfactorily cleared up. All that is known is, that Wulford and

the friar were speedily arrested, whereupon Wulford was put to death, and

the friar consigned to prison for life.

Scarcely had this blown over, when it was reported that Warbeck and

Warwick had endeavoured to escape from the Tower together. Warbeck must

have been allowed to have free access to Warwick after he was sent to the

Tower--a circumstance not likely to have been permitted by the cautious

and vigilant Henry VII. had he not had some ulterior purpose in it. Once

together, however, Warbeck won the favour of the simple and inexperienced

Warwick, who was as ignorant of the world as a child, having passed

nearly all his life in prison. Warbeck, however, exercised the same

fascination over the highest and most intelligent persons whenever he had

access to them. To the Tower he carried his active spirit of intrigue

and adventure, and we soon find him in the enjoyment, for so dangerous

a character, of extraordinary liberty and range in that State prison.

He had not only completely won over the Earl of Warwick, but their

keepers, Strangways, Astwood, Long Roger, and Blewet. These men engaged

to murder their master, Sir John Digby, the Governor of the Tower, to get

possession of the keys, and to conduct Warbeck and Warwick to the Yorkist

partisans, by whom Warbeck was to be proclaimed King Richard IV., and

Warwick to be restored to his titles and estates.

This plot, it is said, was discovered in time; and this was another

circumstance which caused the public to suspect that the whole thing had

been of the contriving, or, at least, of the permission of Henry, to rid

him of these troublesome aspirants. The two offenders were immediately

confined in separate cells. The servants of the Governor were brought

to trial, and Blewet and Astwood were condemned and hanged. On the 16th

of November, Warbeck was arraigned in Westminster Hall for sundry acts

of high treason, since as a foreigner he had come into these kingdoms.

They were, in fact, the attempts on the crown which we have related. He

was condemned and hanged at Tyburn on the 23rd of November, 1499. On the

scaffold his confession was read, and he declared it, on the word of a

dying man, to be wholly true. Such was the end of this extraordinary

adventurer. Bacon describes his enterprise as "one of the largest

plays of the kind that hath been in memory; and might, perhaps, have

had another end if he had not met with a king both wise, stout, and

fortunate."

On the 21st of November, the Earl of Warwick was brought to trial before

the peers, though he had been attainted from his birth, and had never

taken his oath and seat as a peer of the realm. The charge against

him was his conspiracy with Warbeck to dethrone the king. The poor

youth pleaded guilty, either as weary of a life which had been but one

long injury and wrong, in consequence of his birth, or because he was

destitute, from his perpetual confinement, of the activity of mind to

comprehend his situation. Probably he imagined that if he confessed

himself guilty, he would be pardoned, and sent back to his cell. But

Henry had no such intention. The Earl of Oxford, as Lord Steward,

pronounced judgment, and three days afterwards he was beheaded on Tower

Hill. Thus perished the last legitimate descendant of the Plantagenets

who could alarm the fears of Henry Tudor.

A few months after these tragic events, a plague broke out in London,

which the people considered as a direct judgment from Heaven for such

wicked bloodshed. Henry got out of town, but not feeling himself safe,

after several changes of residence, he went over to Calais, and whilst

there he had an interview with the Archduke Philip of Burgundy. Henry

invited the archduke to take up his quarters in Calais, but it is a proof

of the distrust which even his own allies entertained of the politic

Henry, that the archduke declined putting himself into his power, and

agreed to meet him at St. Pierre, near that city. What the archduke was

particularly anxious to see Henry for, was to excite his jealousy of

France, and secure his co-operation in counteracting its ambition.

Charles VIII. of France, an ambitious youth, had made a grand expedition

into Italy to seize on the two Sicilies, having contrived to make out a

claim upon them, which, though empty in itself, was good enough for an

excuse for conquest. He had passed over the Alps with an army of upwards

of 30,000 men. At first all gave way before him, but an extensive league

was soon formed against the French encroachment, including Ferdinand of

Spain, Maximilian, the King of the Romans, the father of Philip, the Duke

of Milan, and the Doge of Venice. Charles, who had led a most dissipated

life, died suddenly in 1498 at the castle of Amboise, and the Duke of

Orleans succeeded as Louis XII. Louis was as fully bent as Charles had

been on prosecuting the conquest of Naples and Sicily, and in 1499

marched with a fresh army into the south of Italy.

It was to secure Henry's assistance in the league against the aggression

of France, which alarmed all Europe, that Philip used his most eloquent

persuasives, but the only persuasives with Henry were moneys, and these

Louis had already extended. He renewed the peace of Étaples, paid up

the arrears of Henry's pension, and secured the interest of the Pope,

with whom Henry was desirous to stand well, by paying him 20,000 ducats

for a dispensation enabling him to divorce his wife, and marry Anne of

Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII., and an old flame of his. He had

also made over the Valentinois, in Dauphiné, with a pension of 20,000

livres, to the Pope's son, the vile Cæsar Borgia. The Pope, moreover,

was coquetting with Henry, inviting him, by an express nuncio, to join a

league for an imaginary crusade to the Holy Land, which Henry was ready

to do for the cession of some real ports in Italy as places for the

retreat and security of his fleet in those seas.

It was not likely that Philip of Burgundy would make much progress with

Henry, except so far as he could serve him by keeping certain matters,

well known at the Courts of Burgundy and Flanders, concerning the real

history of Perkin Warbeck, secret; and his anxiety on this head more and

more convinced people that Warbeck had been something more than the son

of a Jew.

Henry VII. having succeeded in ridding himself of all the pretenders to

his crown, now set himself to complete the marriages of his children,

and to make money with redoubled ardour. Negotiations had been going

on with James of Scotland for the marriage of Henry's eldest daughter,

Margaret. In 1496 James, who had previously declined the match, now in

communication with Fox, Bishop of Durham, offered to enter into that

contract. Henry gladly assented, and, when some of his council suggested

that in case of the failure of the male line in England, a Scottish

prince, born of this marriage, would become the heir, and England a mere

appendage of Scotland, "No," replied Henry, "Scotland will become an

appendage of England, for the smaller must follow the larger kingdom."

And, no doubt, this idea had from the first actuated the calculating mind

of the Tudor. On the 29th of January, 1502, the parties were solemnly

affianced in the queen's chamber, the Earl of Bothwell having come to

London as proxy for James. Margaret, at the time of this affiancing, was

but just turned twelve years of age, and it was agreed that she should

remain twenty months longer under the roof of her parents. Accordingly,

it was not till the 8th of July, 1503, that she set out on her journey to

Scotland.

[Illustration: THE BYWARD TOWER: TOWER OF LONDON.]

Simultaneously had been proceeding the negotiations with the Spanish

Court for the marriage between Henry's eldest son, Arthur, and Catherine,

the daughter of Ferdinand, King of Aragon. The negotiations for this

marriage had commenced so early as 1489, when the young prince was not

yet three years old, and Catherine but four. In 1496 a further step was

taken; and Ferdinand then promised to give the princess a portion of

200,000 crowns, and Henry engaged that his son should endow her with

one-third of his present income, and the same of the income of the Crown,

if he should live to be king. It was stipulated that so soon as Prince

Arthur reached his twelfth year, a dispensation should be obtained to

empower him to make the contract; and, accordingly, the marriage was

performed by proxy, the Spanish ambassador assuming this part, in the

chapel of the prince's manor of Bewdley. These two children, who were

at this period, the one ten, and the other eleven years of age, were

educated in the highest possible degree by their respective parents; and

at the time of their actual marriage, in 1501, when Arthur was fifteen,

and Catherine nearly sixteen, they were perhaps the two most learned

persons of their years in the two kingdoms of Spain and England. The

festivities over, Arthur retired to his castle of Ludlow with his bride,

and there kept a Court modelled on that of the king. Great hopes and

auguries were drawn from this marriage, and wonderful futures to them

and their descendants were promised them by the astrologers. But little

more than five months sufficed to falsify all the earthly predictions;

for the young prince fell suddenly ill and died. Various reasons for his

death are assigned by different authorities. Some assert that he died of

consumption; others declare that he was perfectly sound and robust, and

that he died of some epidemic--the sweating sickness, or, as the Spanish

historian says, the plague. Great sickness of some kind was prevailing

in the neighbourhood, so that at Worcester the funeral, according to the

Spanish herald, was but thinly attended. Prince Arthur died on the 2nd

of April, 1502. He was a prince of great promise, and the beauty of his

person, the sweetness of his manner, and his brilliant accomplishments,

won him universal favour, which was equally shared by his young bride.

The death of Arthur was a shock to the political arrangements, as well

as to the affections of the royal parties on both sides. Ferdinand was

anxious to retain a close alliance with England, as a counterpoise to

the ascendency of France. He therefore proposed to Henry that Catherine

should be affianced to Henry Duke of York, Prince Arthur's younger

brother. This was a very legitimate project according to the Jewish

law, but not so much in accordance with the practice of the Christian

world. Henry VII. appeared to hesitate--it may safely be surmised with

no intention of allowing the young princess, and her dowry of 200,000

crowns, to escape him; but rather, it may be supposed, with a design

to exact something more. To hasten his decision, however, the Spanish

monarch announced as the alternative that Catherine must be at once

restored to her parents, with half of the marriage portion already paid.

This had immediate effect on the deliberations of Henry. He showed

himself ready to assent, if there were an additional incentive in the

shape of another sum. Ferdinand and Isabella were firm. They declared

themselves ready to pay the remaining 100,000 crowns on the contract of

the marriage, which should take effect two months after the receipt of

a dispensation from the Pope. Henry tried every art to extort a larger

sum, and it was not till June, 1503, that this proposition was finally

accepted. The solemnisation of the marriage was to take place on the

young Prince Henry completing his fourteenth year. But the difficulties

were not yet over. The two monarchs continued, like two skilful players,

to try every move which might delay the payment of the money, or compel

it with an augmentation. In this state the matter remained till 1504,

when Henry and Catherine, on the 25th of June, were betrothed, but still

not married, at the house of the Bishop of Salisbury, in Fleet Street.

Scarcely had the eyes of Elizabeth of York closed (she died in 1503), at

the early age of thirty-seven, than Henry was on the look-out for another

wife, for it was another opportunity of making a profit. His eyes glanced

over the courts and courtly dames of Europe; and the lady who struck him

as the most attractive in the world was the widow of the late King of

Naples--for the deceased monarch had bequeathed her an immense property.

Her ducats were charms that told on the gold-loving heart of Henry most

ravishingly. He posted off three private gentlemen, well skilled in such

delicate inquiries, to Naples, to learn from real sources whether all

was safe as to this grand dowry. Poor Catherine was even made to play a

part in this notable scheme of courtship, by furnishing the emissaries

with a letter to her relative, the queen-dowager. The gentlemen reported

in the most glowing terms the charms of the queen-dowager's person, the

sweetness of her disposition, and the brilliant endowments of her mind,

but they were obliged to add that, though the lady's fortune was in

justice as large as fame reported it, the present king refused to carry

out the will by which it was conferred. This one unlucky fact at once

blotted out all the rest, and Henry, giving not another thought to the

dowager-queen of Naples, turned his attention to the dowager-duchess of

Savoy, who was also reported to be rich.

While Henry, however, was traversing Europe with the design of adding to

his ever-growing hoards, he was equally diligent at home in prosecuting

every art by which he could add another mark to his heap. He sought

out and kept in his pay clever and unprincipled lawyers to search the

old statute-books for laws grown obsolete, but which had never been

formally repealed; and he had another set of spies in correspondence

with them, who went to and fro throughout the whole kingdom to mark out

all such persons of property as had transgressed these slumbering laws.

Such a state of things could never have been tolerated in any former

reign; but the wars of the Roses had cut off all the chief nobility,

and the House of Commons, terrified by the summary proceedings against

offenders, had become utterly cowed, and trembled at the mere word of

this imperious monarch. Never, therefore, was the English people at any

time so completely prostrated beneath the talons of a royal vampire as at

this period. The rich merchants of London found themselves accused of

malpractices in the discharge of their civic offices, and were subjected

to the same process of squeezing in Henry's universal press.

To drain the coffers of the landed aristocracy, Henry's agents brought

up against them all the old obsolete feudal charges of wardships, aids,

liveries, premier seizins, and scutages. Their estates had long been

held under a different tenure, obtained from former monarchs. No matter:

all those marked out for legal bleeding were brought into the private

inquisition of the king's commissioners, and compelled to pay whatever

was demanded, or to suffer worse inconveniences. Even his own friends

were not exempted from the ever-watchful eyes and schemes of this

money-making king. The law which he had enacted against the practice of

"maintenance" was a prolific source of emolument. A striking example of

this species of royal sharp practice was given in the case of John de

Vere, Earl of Oxford. This nobleman having entertained the king on one

occasion for several days magnificently at his castle of Henningham, to

do the utmost honour to him at his departure, summoned all his friends

and retainers, arrayed in all their livery coats and cognisances, and

ranged them in two rows leading from the reception rooms to the royal

carriage. Henry's eye was instantly struck with this prodigious display

of wealth and of men, and his mind as suddenly leapt to a felicitous

conclusion. There was money to be made out of it. The king said: "By my

faith, my lord, I thank you for your good cheer, but I may not endure to

have my laws thus broken in my sight: my attorney must speak to you." The

earl was prosecuted for thus seeking to flatter the vanity of his master,

and compelled to gratify Henry's avarice by a fine of 15,000 marks.

Whilst the king himself set so notable an example of extortion, we may

be sure that his commissioners, spies, and tools of all sorts were not

slack in this abominable business of ferreting out and putting through

the cruel torture of their secret courts, the unhappy subjects of

every corner of the kingdom who had any substance to prey upon. "The

king," says Bacon, "had gotten for his purpose, or beyond his purpose,

two instruments, Empson and Dudley, whom the people esteemed as his

horse-leeches and shearers: bold men, and careless of fame, and that took

toll of their master's grist. Dudley was of a good family, eloquent,

and one that could put hateful business into good language. But Empson,

that was the son of a sieve-maker, triumphed always upon the deed done,

putting off all other respects whatsoever."

The tempestuous weather of January, 1506, which brought to others the

disastrous news of vessels wrecked and lives lost, brought to Henry VII.

tidings of a most exciting and elating kind. It was no other than that

amongst the foreign vessels driven into the port of Weymouth, were some

containing the Archduke Philip of Flanders and his wife Joanna, the

elder sister of Catherine of Aragon, his daughter-in-law, and daughter

of his friend and ally Ferdinand of Spain. The Archduke Philip knew his

man; and at their meeting near Calais, in 1500, though he attempted to

hold Henry's stirrup, and heaped upon him the titles of his father and

protector, he took good care to keep out of his clutches; nothing would

induce him to enter the city. But now circumstances were greatly changed;

and the archduke and his wife Joanna would be a much more valuable prize.

The mother of Joanna, the Queen Isabella of Spain, was dead, and Joanna

was, in her own right, Queen of Castile, and Philip, by hers, king. There

was a number of things, any one of which Henry would have been only too

happy to extort from Philip.

The prince soon found himself received with much magnificence at the

castle of Windsor; but he was not suffered to remain long without feeling

that he was in the hands of a man who would have his full advantage

out of him. The insatiable old miser went to work and propounded his

demands, and there was nothing for it but for Philip to comply, if he

ever meant to see Spain. First, Henry informed him that he was intending

to marry, and that Philip's sister, the dowager-duchess of Savoy, was

the woman of his choice. He demanded with her the sum of 300,000 crowns,

of which 100,000 should be paid in August--it was already the 10th of

March--and the remainder in six years by equal instalments. Besides

this, Margaret, the duchess, was in the annual receipt of two dowries;

one as the widow of John, Prince of Spain, and the other as widow of

Philibert, Duke of Savoy, for she had been twice married already. This

income Henry stipulated should be settled upon himself, and the princess

was to receive instead an income as queen of England. That meant that

Henry would have an income certain, and give her one most uncertain, for

at this very time Catherine, the widow of his son Arthur, and betrothed

bride of his son Henry, was kept by him in a condition of the most

shameful destitution.

Philip consented--for what could he do?--and that point settled, Henry

informed Philip that he had also a son, whom he, Henry, proposed to

marry to his youngest daughter, Mary. This must have been a still more

bitter draught for the poor Spanish monarch than the former. Henry had

already made this very proposal, and it had been at once rejected. This

son of Philip, the future celebrated Emperor Charles V., was now a child

of six years of age, and the little Princess Mary was just three! Philip,

however much he might inwardly rebel, and however differently he had

planned the destiny of his son, was in the miser's vice, and the thing

was done.

[Illustration: KING HENRY'S DEPARTURE FROM HENNINGHAM CASTLE. (_See p._

99.)]

Soon there came about fresh complications. Philip of Flanders, or, as

he was oftener called, Philip the Fair of Austria, was but an invalid

when he set out on his unlucky voyage to Spain. His detention in England

during the three most trying months of its trying climate, January,

February, and March, added to the vexation of the engagement forced

upon him by the relentless Henry, is said to have completely broken

his constitution; he sank and died in about six months. No sooner did

King Henry hear this news, than, throwing aside all further thoughts of

the Duchess of Savoy, he applied for the hand of Joanna, the widow of

Philip. With Joanna, Queen of Castile, married to himself, and Charles,

her son, the heir of all Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria, married

to his daughter Mary, what visions of greatness and empire must have

swum before the keen eyes of Henry, and excited his intense passion of

acquisitiveness! Ferdinand returned for answer, that the proposal would

have been well pleasing to him, but that Queen Joanna, from violent grief

for the loss of her husband, was become permanently insane. This answer,

which would have been all-sufficient for most men, was treated as a mere

trifle by Henry, who replied that he knew the queen, having seen her in

England; that her derangement of mind was not the effect of grief, but of

the harsh treatment of Philip; that she would soon be all right, and that

he was quite ready to marry her. Ferdinand reiterated the certainty of

the lady's fixed madness, and Henry rejoined that if he was not allowed

to marry her, the king's other daughter, Catherine, should never marry

his son.

There is no doubt that, could Henry have secured the hand of

Joanna--"the Mad Queen," as she came to be called--he would have broken

off the contract between Henry, his son, and Catherine, and kept her and

her dower in England nevertheless. But the marriage of Henry VII. with

Joanna being an impossibility, Ferdinand promised to send the remaining

half of Catherine's dower by instalments, and Henry consented that the

marriage of the two young people should take place as soon as the money

was paid. Catherine, whose letters to her father had, for the most part,

been intercepted and detained by Henry, at length gave up her opposition

also to the wedding, declaring, in one of these letters, that it was

better for her to marry the prince than remain in the woful condition

of destitution and dependence in which her father-in-law kept her. The

remainder of the dower, however, was never paid up during Henry's time,

and therefore the marriage did not take place till after his death.

[Illustration: HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

In the midst of his grasping, his hoarding, and his scheming, the king's

end was drawing on, though he was far from an old man. The gout had

long visited him with its periodical attacks. He was liable, during the

cold and variable weather of spring, to complaints of the chest, which

assumed the appearance of consumption, and occasionally reduced him very

low. When the sickness was strong upon him he ordered Empson and Dudley

to cease their villainies; as he got worse he commanded them even to

make restitution to those whom they had pillaged and imprisoned; but as

he grew better again, he instructed them that it was only necessary to

recompense such as had not been dealt with according to the regular forms

of law--so that as these vultures generally tore their victims in a legal

fashion, and as they themselves were made the judges of the necessary

restitution, very little was done. Henry VII. died at his palace of

Richmond on the 21st of April, 1509, in the fifty-fourth year of his age

and the twenty-fourth of his reign.