HENRY VII.—1485 to 1509.
How Henry the Seventh united the parties of the White and the Red
Roses; how Lambert Simnel, and afterwards Perkin Warbeck, rebelled
against him, but were subdued; how the people began to improve
themselves in learning; how America was discovered; how King Henry
did many useful things, but was not beloved by the people.
When the Earl of Richmond was made king, and was called Henry the
Seventh, many persons began to be afraid that the wars of the Roses
would begin again. But Henry was a wise man, and he had made friends
of the party of York, by promising to marry his cousin Elizabeth, the
sister of the little princes who were smothered in the Tower. So,
as soon as he was crowned himself, and the people had owned him for
their king, he married Elizabeth; and as Henry was King of the Red
Rose party, and she was Queen of the White Rose party, the people
agreed better than they had done for more than thirty years, and
England began to be quiet and happy.
However, there were two disturbances in the beginning of Henry’s
reign that I must tell you of. There was a very good-looking young
man, called Lambert Simnel, that some people thought was very like
the Earl of Warwick, a son of that Duke of Clarence who was killed in
the Tower; and some persons, who wished to annoy Henry the Seventh,
persuaded Lambert to say he was Warwick, and that he had run away
from the Tower, and had hidden himself till after his uncle Richard’s
death; but that now, as Richard and his little cousins were all dead,
he had a right to be king. Some few Englishmen joined him, and a
good many Irish. But in a battle at Stoke, in the North of England,
they were all driven away, and Lambert was taken prisoner.
[Illustration: Marriage of King Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York.]
The king, who knew the poor young man had been forced to do what
he did by other people, did not send him to prison, but made him a
turnspit in his kitchen; and, as he behaved very well there, he
afterwards gave him the care of his hawks.
The second disturbance was of more consequence. A young man, called
Perkin Warbeck, was taught by one of King Henry’s enemies, the
Duchess of Burgundy, to call himself Richard Duke of York.
He said that he was the brother to the little king killed by Richard
in the Tower, and that Dighton and Forrest could not bear to kill
them both, and that he had hidden himself till he could get to the
duchess, who, as he said, was his aunt.
Now King Henry knew this story was not true, yet it vexed him very
much. For Perkin Warbeck prevailed on several noblemen in Ireland to
take his part, and he went to Scotland, and got the king to believe
him, and to let him marry a beautiful young lady, named Catharine
Gordon, the king’s own cousin, and to march into England with an
army, where he did a great deal of mischief before King Henry’s army
could drive him away. Then Perkin sailed to Cornwall, and collected
a small army; but after doing just enough mischief to make everybody
fear him and his people, he was taken prisoner by King Henry, who
kept him some time in the Tower: at last he was hanged at Tyburn, and
nobody was sorry for him but his poor wife Lady Catharine.
King Henry sent for that unfortunate lady, and took her to the queen,
who treated her very kindly, and made her live with her, and did all
she could to make her happy again.
England was quite quiet for the rest of King Henry’s reign; and
Wales, which had been ill-treated by the Kings of England ever since
Edward the First conquered it, was better treated by Henry.
As there was no fighting, the young men began to try to improve
themselves in learning. Some years before that time, some clever men
in Germany had found out how to print books instead of copying them
in writing, so there were a great many more books, and more people
could learn to read. The young men in Cambridge and Oxford began to
read the good books that had been forgotten in the wars of the Roses,
and they were ashamed to find that there were not half a dozen men in
England who knew anything at all about Greek. I think one of those
few was Grocyn, a teacher at Oxford.
But the English had soon a very good Greek teacher. A young man born
at Canterbury, called Thomas Linacre, after learning all he could
at the school in his own town, and at Oxford, went to travel in
Italy, where the most learned men in the world lived at that time.
These learned men soon found out that Thomas Linacre was very clever
indeed, and so they helped him to learn everything that he desired,
for the sake of improving his own country when he came back. He
studied everything so carefully, that on his return to Oxford the
greatest and wisest men went to him to be taught Greek, besides many
other things he had learned in his travels. He was chosen to be tutor
to the king’s eldest son, Prince Arthur, and he was afterwards tutor
to some of the next king’s children. He was the greatest physician in
England, and before he died he founded the same College of Physicians
that we have now.
In the next chapter we shall have a great deal to read about several
of Linacre’s scholars; but I tell you about him now that you may know
that it was in this king’s time that the gentlemen of England began
to think of reading and studying, instead of doing nothing but fight.
About this time, sailors from Europe first found their way to
America. Christopher Columbus went from Spain, Americo Vespucci from
Italy, and Sebastian Cabot from England. They all arrived safe at the
other side of the wide ocean, and then it was first known for certain
that there was such a place as America. How surprised all their
friends must have been, when they came home, and told of the strange
things they had seen! The trees and the flowers were all different
from ours. The birds were larger, and had more beautiful feathers;
the butterflies had gayer colours than we had ever seen. Then they
brought home turkeys, which their found in the woods, and potatoes,
which they had eaten for the first time, to plant in our fields and
gardens. But I should fill a whole book if I tried to tell you of
all the things that were brought from the new countries found out in
Henry the Seventh’s time.
We must now speak of the king himself. His wife, Elizabeth of York,
was dead. She had four children, Arthur and Henry, Mary and Margaret.
Mary became Queen of France, and Margaret Queen of Scotland. Arthur,
who was the eldest, was good and clever, but very sickly, and he died
before his father; so Henry was the next king.
Henry the Seventh was a very wise man, and a severe king. His
greatest fault was loving money, so that he took unjust ways to get
it from his subjects. He was very unwilling to spend anything upon
himself or other people. But yet he laid out a great deal of money in
building a great palace at Richmond, and in adding a beautiful chapel
to Westminster Abbey, and in other fine buildings. He sent to Italy
for painters and sculptors, to make pictures and statues; and he was
fond of encouraging learning and trade.
But though he did many good and useful things, nobody loved him; and
when he died there were very few persons indeed sorry for him.