READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

DOORS OF WISDOM

ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS.KING HENRY VII(1485-1509).

CHAPTER III.

PERKIN WARBECK.

MUCH against his will Henry’s attention had been directed to Ireland at the time when the false Warwick rebelled against him there. But nothing could prevail upon the king to abandon his prudent and watchful attitude with regard to this, the most insecure part of his dominions. After the victory of Stoke, he left it to the Pope to proceed against the prelates, who were implicated in the affair; while he himself made no move till after his spiritual ally had done so, and then with every precaution. Not till May, 1488, a year after, did he send Sir Richard Edgecombe to Ireland, in order to receive into the king’s favour those Irishmen who were ready to make submission, and to administer a new oath of allegiance; at the same time he was to proceed against rebels and traitors, as Maurice Earl of Desmond had already been commissioned to do in the southern counties. Edgecombe first visited the loyal town of Waterford; in Kinsale, Dublin, Drogheda, and Trim, the authorities took the required oath; but it was only after long negotiations, and after having been obliged to consent to a modification of the form of oath, that he induced the Earl of Kildare with his confederates to take it on the 21st of June, 1488. Henry’s special desire to persuade the Earl to come to England, by the promise of a safe conduct, remained unfulfilled; the king was compelled to be satisfied with what he had already achieved.

Not till July, 1490, two years later, was this attempt with Kildare repeated. John Estrete, the receiver of taxes in Dublin, was told to promise him the same favour which he had received from King Edward, and to offer him the dignity of Deputy for another ten years, if he would come to England in the course of the following year, to discuss the affairs of Ireland; he was also promised a safe conduct and pardon for any possible offence. The earl’s reply was silence; not till just before the expiration of the given time did he condescend to make excuses for his non-appearance. Many lords, spiritual and temporal, wrote with the same intention, saying that as Kildare’s presence was indispensable, they also had persuaded him not to go; and they assured the king of the earl’s loyalty. Time was shortly to throw light on the questionable nature of this assurance.

The victory at Stoke had certainly put an end to an attempted Yorkist rising, but not to the Yorkist party, which still continued to work unremittingly against the Tudor usurper. In December, 1489, was discovered a new plot to set the Earl of Warwick free by force, in which two of Lincoln’s companions, who had been fortunate enough to escape, the Abbot of Abingdon, and a certain John Maine, took part; they died on the gallows at Tyburn. In the spring of 1491, there were troubles again in Yorkshire, always more or less disturbed, and the Earl of Surrey had to put down the insurgents by force at Ackworth, near Pontefract.

We find in the same year, 1491, the first indication of a new and wide-spreading conspiracy, which also inscribed the name of Warwick on its banner. Faithful adherents of the House of York, both English and Irish, met together and entered into league with the French Government, then on the eve of war. A certain John Taylor, formerly a merchant in Exeter, had been a court official and surveyor of the customs in many of the seaport towns under Edward IV and Richard III, and had received a pardon from Henry only in June, 1489. This man was residing in France. It was necessary, for the plan of an attack on England, to gain over persons of standing in the southern ports, and Taylor therefore addressed himself by letter, from Rouen, on the 15th of September, 1491, to an acquaintance of his, and a former servant of Warwick’s father Clarence, John Hayes, to whom Henry had assigned many influential posts of confidence in the seaport towns of Exeter and Dartmouth. Taylor spoke of the help they expected from the French and from other confederates; they would find support, he said, in “three different places outside the kingdom.” Hayes was to speak to his friends, and he gave as the object for which they were to contend in England, with the connivance of France, the elevation to the throne of the “son of your lord.” This, again, was none other than the Earl of Warwick. Unfortunately we are able but slightly to raise the veil which covers these preliminary intrigues. It is clear, however, that the name of the Earl of Warwick was once more used as a pretext for the undertaking, and this second plan seems in its earlier development to have been a mere repetition of the former; a false Warwick was again to be set up in Ireland against Henry. The year was one of famine in the island, so much the more, therefore, was there hope of stirring up the people to sedition and war. Chance put into the hands of the ringleaders a suitable pretender, just at the outset of the conspiracy. It was, perhaps, at the time when Taylor despatched his letter, or perhaps rather later, that there landed in the town of Cork, in the south of Ireland, a Breton merchant named Pregent Meno. He had in his service a handsome youth of seventeen, who flaunted through the streets of the town attired in silken garments, the property of his master, probably with the idea of advertising them in this way, as a specimen of the stock­in-trade, and he attracted thereby the attention of the Yorkist partisans, who were staying in Cork. They tried to persuade him to personate Warwick, but he is said to have refused in the most decided manner, and to have sworn on the gospels, before the mayor of the town, that he was neither the son of the Duke of Clarence, nor one of his race. The plan was therefore allowed to drop, but still the conspiracy was held to, and so was the person of the now chosen pretender. John Walter, a well-known citizen of Cork, who had often held the post of mayor, and Stephen Poytron, an Englishman, tried to persuade him to come forward as a bastard son of Richard III; at last they agreed he should personate the second son of Edward, Richard of York, who had been murdered in the Tower, and whom Simnel at first was to have represented. John Taylor, who had returned from France, and a Hubert Burgh were selected as leaders, the help of the Earls of Kildare and of Desmond was counted upon, in spite of the recent assurances given, to Henry of Kildare’s loyalty. “And so, against my will,” as the pretender afterwards said, “they made me to learne English, and taught me what I should do and saye.”

In this way was set up the new opposition king, Perkin Warbeck, who was to cause Henry more trouble and danger than any other, and whose career was wrapped in all the charm of romance.

This Warbeck was born in 1474 or 1475 in the Flemish town of Tournay, where his father John Werbeque or Warbeck lived as a boatman on the Scheldt, and at the same time was a surveyor of customs. His real Christian name was Peter, Perkin being a diminutive pet name meaning “little Peter,”—“Peterkin.” From his very childhood he lived a life of constant change and adventure; at Antwerp and Tournay, again at Antwerp, at Middelburg and Lisbon, he had already served under five different masters, when, still scarcely seventeen, he entered the service of Pregent Meno and went with him to Ireland, where his historical career began.

The chief distinction between the new and the earlier rising, was that this time no man of note appears at the head. John Walter and John Taylor came forward as leaders, Perkin Warbeck was only an instrument in their hands, but soon he stood in the foreground as head of the whole movement. The undertaking was to.be placed on a broader basis than the earlier one led by Lincoln; a league had already been made with English malcontents and with France. Perkin himself applied to the Earls of Kildare and Desmond, and with the latter, to England’s border enemy, the Scottish king, as early as the beginning of 1492.

Charles VIII of France had jumped at the welcome proposals against England; he invited the pretender to France, where Perkin appeared and was received with honour. It is evident from Taylor’s letter that serious plans were entertained for an attack, in conjunction with the anticipated insurrection of the Yorkists, but, in consequence of the peace negotiations, which occupied the whole of the year 1492, and of the treaty of Etaples, which followed after a short warlike demonstration, no further move was made by Perkin. Henry was already on his guard; the intrigues between Taylor and Hayes were discovered, and Charles VIII was obliged to undertake, in a special agreement made at the same time as the great treaty of peace, not to entertain or to support any rebels or traitors against Henry. Perkin was dismissed from France and took refuge with Margaret of York.

The danger which he had hitherto caused Henry in Ireland and France had vanished as it came; now, received by Margaret as her nephew, he came forward more openly with his claims. We cannot discover whether the Dowager Duchess, who was so much to the front throughout the whole of this business, acted in the service of Maximilian, or whether it was she who won over the King of the Romans to make his policy serve the interests of her house. In any case, his dislike to the Tudor monarch was nothing new; their transient alliance gave place, after the peace of Etaples, to the most bitter hatred on the part of Maximilian, so that he scarcely needed any incentive to receive as a friend an opponent of Henry. Neither Maximilian nor Margaret had any special interest in the person of the pretender. Perkin asserted later on, on oath, that Margaret had known as well as himself that he was not king Edward’s son. For them, as before for the Yorkist partisans, he was only the instrument of their policy against Henry.

As soon as the king had received information as to Perkin’s whereabouts and conduct, he began to take active measures. In July, 1493, Sir Edward Poynings and William Warham went with a power to Maximilian, who had not been in the Netherlands since 1489, and also to his son the Archduke Philip ; at the same time Henry issued orders to his subjects to be ready for war, in order to protect England against surprises. He was already accurately informed of the personality and former history of his rival. When the council of the young archduke put the ambassadors off with the excuse that Margaret could not be interfered with, as she was sole mistress in her dower lands, Henry set to work in right earnest. However much he had till now shown himself anxious to promote the interests of commerce, the interests of the dynasty were of paramount importance to him, and for these he demanded sacrifices even from commerce itself. He knew how seriously it would affect the Netherlands when he forbade traffic with Philip’s subjects, and when he removed the mart kept by the merchant adventurers in Antwerp to Calais on the 21st of September, 1493. Flemings were ordered out of England and their goods were seized. Not till half a year later (April 8, 1494), did the retaliation come, forbidding the importation of English cloths, their purchase, sale, and shipment, and closing the Low Countries to the English merchant.

It was a cheap war for the lord of the land, which was carried on only with the purse of his subjects. As in the case of Venice, Henry reckoned on the dependence of the Netherlands upon English wool, and on the stoppage to trade, which the absence of the English must produce at Antwerp. We hear, also, that this prohibition was evaded in various ways in the Netherlands, and it had to be renewed with emphatic severity in January, 1495.

But in England, too, the consequences were being felt; here it came at last to a wild outburst of the long smouldering hatred for strangers, which was directed against the Hanse merchants, who were getting some advantage from the situation, by attracting to themselves the whole of the trade now forbidden between the English and the Flemings. As yet the effect of the prohibition could scarcely have been felt to any great extent, nor had the counter-measure of the Netherlanders yet been carried out, when that bitter feeling against more fortunate rivals, which had only been waiting for a favourable occasion, burst forth. The members of the Mercers’ Guild took the lead, the others followed, and the citizens of the metropolis were ready. On the 15th of October, 1493, took place a regular storming of the Hanseatic Steelyard in London, and it was only with difficulty that the inmates could defend themselves till the Lord Mayor brought an armed force to their assistance.

Nothing could have been more foolish than such discord between two countries so naturally connected as England and the Burgundian Netherlands. No adequate motives are to be found for the Burgundian policy in bringing about this rupture on the occasion of the Yorkist rising; the only explanation lies in Maximilian’s personal influence, and in his newly awakened grudge against Henry after the treaty of Etaples. As the alliance with Henry had not quite answered his expectations with regard to France, he possibly cherished the hope that a Yorkist king at the head of English affairs, supported by himself, would be more likely to fall in with his wishes.[2] It was imprudent enough on his part to break with England for the sake of such extravagant plans, and from personal irritation, but this antagonistic attitude appears still more serious in view of the political situation in general.

Charles VIII of France made good use of the liberty he had bought so dearly by the treaties of Etaples, Barcelona, and Senlis. He represented in Naples the right of succession of the house of Anjou to the throne of that kingdom, in opposition to the illegitimate collateral branch of the house of Aragon, which had worn the crown since the middle of the century. In September, 1494, he crossed the Alps with a splendid army, advanced to Florence without encountering any resistance, and from there to Rome; King Alfonso II abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Ferdinand II, but on the 22nd of February, 1495, Charles was master of Naples, and Ferdinand was obliged to fly. Seldom has conqueror found his work so easy; the question now simply was, whether Charles had ability and power enough to keep hold of the prize he had won. This would have implied an overwhelming position for France; therefore the common interest of the other powers was aroused against such a preponderance of one single nation. For Italy it was ominous that the prize of the long ten years’ war, now about to begin, should be a portion of Italian territory, and above all that Italy herself must be the battlefield.

It was Spain, the ally of France in the league of Barcelona, who now took the lead against her threatening ascendancy. Ferdinand forthwith raised objections, not from any special affection for his illegitimate cousins, but in the interests of his whole House, and also because he might be annoyed in Sicily by the proximity of the French. The protection of the Pope, Alexander VI, a Borgia, elected August, 1492, served as a pretext for this proceeding on the part of the Spaniards; they even managed to find out a justification for it from a clause in the treaty of Barcelona itself, and when Charles, already standing on the soil of Naples, repudiated these objections, the ambassador Fonseca, in a pre-arranged theatrical manner, tore up the original document of the treaty before the eyes of the French king. Venice first had taken the side of Spain in her policy against France; at Venice took place in March, 1495, the final negotiations, which led to the conclusion of the “Holy League” on the 31st of March. The Pope, Spain, the King of the Romans, Milan, and Venice bound themselves together for the mutual defence of their countries, and if no names were mentioned, the obvious wording of the first article of the treaty could only point to the French conqueror.

With such enmity on all sides, the danger was far greater for Charles than at the time of the Breton war. Spain especially, no longer withheld by other enterprises, threatened him with the full force of her great power. Charles would not wait to be attacked; he had himself crowned solemnly at Naples on the 12th of May, 1495, and then began to turn homewards, to fight his way through the troops of the league at Fornuovo. The fugitive king, Ferdinand II, returned with some Spanish troops under Gonsalvo de Cordova; unsuccessful at first, they became in the summer of 1496 masters of the French garrisons, who had been shamefully left in the lurch by their country.

But as there was always a fear that the French might repeat their invasion, the League was compelled to keep together and to increase its strength. Ferdinand therefore desired, before all things, to draw England into the coalition, especially as the vacillating Duke of Milan had passed over to Charles VIII, and made with him the separate peace of Novara in August, 1495. The manner in which Henry’s Spanish friend tried to force him into the new league against France did not show much respect for him. What Henry had to expect from Spanish good faith with regard to treaties was already evident from the article in the treaty of Barcelona, in which the Spaniards had promised the French king that they would help him against England, and avoid an Anglo-Spanish alliance by marriage. It almost seemed as if this last arrangement was to be literally fulfilled.

Ferdinand and Isabella had agreed in principle to a definite drafting of the marriage treaty, which had been urged upon them, and Henry now proposed a form, in March, 1493, which left the old treaty intact, but with the addition of the supplements already demanded, and with the alterations naturally required by the changes brought about by time, and especially by the treaty with France. The answer was a long time coming, external circumstances contributed to cause delay, and it did not appear till the end of 1494 and beginning of 1495. In clearness it left nothing to be desired. The treaty of Medina del Campo had lost its interest for the Spaniards, after they had acquired Roussillon and Cerdagne. We can hardly understand how they could inform Henry that they had been justified in making peace with France because Henry had neither sworn to their treaties nor sent them back, whilst all the time they themselves had previously spoken of “ the concluded treaties.” With this audacious assertion, they had but one end in view, to declare the treaty null and void. They showed themselves, however, ready, if Henry wished it, to conclude a new covenant.

No easier way could they have found of throwing aside a treaty now unnecessary and perhaps burdensome to them, and at the same time of making English policy useful to themselves by the offer of a new treaty. They could not also have shown the English king in a more insulting manner the inequality of their positions, especially now when a new Yorkist rival had just arisen. Henry, however, controlled his feelings, he again gave way to the pressure of the stronger. On the agreement to this demand we have only one report, that of the Spanish ambassador Puebla, who says that Henry spoke of the marriage of Arthur and Katharine, and acknowledged that the earlier treaties were no longer valid, but that nothing more was said on the sub­ject. Nevertheless Henry kept in mind the treatment he had received, and waited only a convenient season for retaliation.

While endeavouring to draw Henry into the League in a way to him so offensive, the Spaniards were especially annoyed by his increasingly amicable relations with France, and his new quarrel with the King of the Romans, a member of the League. After the peace of Etaples, he had returned to his original policy of friendship with France. He was met in a friendly spirit, the conditional payments, were made punctually, Charles gave information about Perkin’s doings in the Netherlands, he offered Henry, in spite of his Italian campaign, the help of his fleet in the event of war, and all support of the pretender was forbidden in France under heavy penalty. The Spanish ambassador drew the attention of his sovereigns to the effect such friendly overtures would have in England, and Ferdinand and Isabella therefore earnestly warned Henry against French untrustworthiness, which they declared themselves to have experienced.

But the quarrel with Maximilian caused them even greater anxiety, especially as they themselves were planning the closest union with him by the double marriage of their children—their eldest son, Don Juan, who, however, died early, with Margaret, formerly the affianced bride of Charles VIII, and their second daughter, Joanna, with the young Archduke Philip. They had, therefore, every reason to smooth down the quarrel between two princes, who were in the future to be closely allied to them. They paid no heed to an appeal for aid from Perkin, supported by the Duchess Dowager; they even offered to Henry their mediation with Maximilian, and acknowledged the justness of his point of view; they promised him their assistance against Perkin, and declared that they were fully resolved to conclude the marriage treaty on the basis of the old terms, but that Henry’s reconciliation with Maximilian must absolutely first take place.

It lay completely in Maximilian’s hands to make this reconciliation, but if the Spaniards insisted that he was ready to do so, and declared he would not support the pretender, it was clear that he had no such intentions himself. When Perkin found he could obtain no satisfactory help from Flanders, he had applied to Maximilian himself, and was presented to the King of the Romans by Albert of Saxony in the autumn of 1493 at Vienna, where he took part in the funeral ceremony of the Emperor Frederick III. When Maximilian, after an absence of five years, again entered the Netherlands, in August,1494, Perkin was among his followers. He appeared at Antwerp with much pomp, surrounded himself with a suite, and bore the white rose on his coat of arms, which he also displayed on the house where he was residing. One day, however, it was torn down and thrown into the mud of the street by a mob of angry Englishmen; the perpetrators made their escape. Maximilian was still try­ing to make inquiries about his protégé. It was asserted that he firmly believed in Perkin ; at any rate he acted as if he did. Scotch ambassadors, too, appeared at his court in June, 1495, to discuss a simultaneous movement. It is uncertain, however, whether the Scottish king had any share in the equipment of Perkin, which was principally undertaken by Maximilian. The King of the Romans tried at the same time to place his own demands on a more secure footing. Perkin had not only to promise large money payments and other benefits to the Duchess Margaret, as soon as he should have conquered his kingdom, but he had first and foremost to acknowledge Maximilian as his heir in all his dominions, in the event of his dying without children. Nothing could show more clearly than this condition that the participation of the king in the undertaking was a mere senseless political adventure, and on this the most vital interests of the Netherlands were with careless indifference to be staked.

In May the Duchess Margaret again applied to Pope Alexander VI to take the side of the rightful heir of York against the usurper Henry. She said it was mere talk when the Spaniards maintained that Perkin had left Flanders because Maximilian wanted to be quit of him, for Maximilian himself declared it had been at his instigation that Perkin, in June, 1495, had put to sea with a fleet of fourteen vessels and some thousand men.

It was of great importance for the pretender that he should get hold of a party in England ready for action. In February, 1493, he had already from Flanders entered into relations with confederates at Westminster, and there seems to have been some suspicion that on this occasion the Hanse merchants were prepared to act the part of a go-between. Henry made another move against Perkin when, on the 1st of November, 1494, he conferred on his second son Henry, born at Greenwich on the 22nd of June, 1491, the title of Duke of York, which the pretender had assumed. More important still was the work which his spies did for him on both sides of the Channel. In November, 1494, and January, 1495, a number of men, both in high and low positions, amongst them some ecclesiastics of note, as the Dean of St. Paul’s and the Provincial of the Dominicans, were brought up for trial. The churchmen were protected by their Order; among the others, Sir Simon Montford, Robert Ratcliff, and William Daubeney were beheaded on Tower Hill on the 27th of January, 1495. Two others concerned, Cressyner and Astwood, were pardoned at the place of execution, “which gladded moche people, for they were both yong men.”

On the 29th and 30th of January other executions followed at Tyburn. John Ratcliff, Lord Fitzwater, was kept in prison at Calais, where in November of the following year he paid with his life for an attempt to escape. We find from a confession, made later on, that many other guilty persons, especially from among the ranks of the higher clergy, had escaped discovery. The king no doubt owed the accurate knowledge he possessed of these intrigues to the circumstance that he found an informer among the conspirators themselves. A certain Sir Robert Clifford had been induced, by the promise of free pardon and high reward, to return from Flanders at the end of 1494, and it was his revelation that led, shortly before Christmas, to the much-talked-of arrest of Sir William Stanley.

Unfortunately we have no record that enables us to see exactly the connection between these events. Stanley had been given the post of chamberlain to the king; he was regarded as a man to whom Henry was Stanley, under special obligations for his opportune assistance at Bosworth. But we must remember that Stanley had remained in a most uncertain state up to the very last moment in the battle; he could scarcely ever have been a reliable partisan, and Henry had been watching him for a long time, without showing outwardly any mistrust, till Clifford’s revelation enabled him to set Stanley on his trial. On the 30th and 31st of January the trial took place before the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall, and Stanley was beheaded on Tower Hill, the 16th of February, 1495. but without the extreme cruelty of the judicial sentence. His very valuable property in land and money was confiscated, and his body buried at the king’s expense.

Every dangerous movement inside the country was suppressed with energy, and yet it is strange that Henry in December should have sent word to France that he was better obeyed than any English king before him. Anyhow he had taken good care, by preparing his small fleet to defend the coast, that Perkin should not succeed in England, as he had himself on his landing in Wales. On the 3rd of July, 1495, Perkin appeared with his squadron before Deal in Kent, some six hundred of his men landed, but a rising of the neighbourhood soon drove them back. About a hundred and seventy men were captured alive and brought to London, where they were kept in the Tower and in Newgate, and before July was over, all, Englishmen as well as foreigners, were sentenced and hanged at various places on the coast of Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Norfolk. At the beginning of September the leaders, amongst whom were a Spaniard and a Frenchman, were executed in London, and their heads set up on London Bridge. Some more sentences of death completed the work of vengeance, which was carried out with more unsparing cruelty than Henry ever exercised before or after.

Possibly the whole attack was against the will of Perkin, who could not yet reckon in the least on success in England, and had himself remained in his ship. He had suffered heavy losses; his squadron had been dispersed, one ship ran on to the coast of Normandy; but he himself made his way to Ireland, the country which, at the outset, had been chosen as the basis of his enterprise.

In Ireland things had altered much? Two aspirants for the throne had first come forward there, and it was absolutely necessary for Henry to take energetic measures attitude with against this centre of Yorkist animosity. What had availed him his clemency to Kildare, who had at once taken the side of Perkin? Henry’s patience was at an end; on the 11th of June, 1492, he appointed the Archbishop of Dublin, Walter Fitzsimons, to be Lord Deputy; Alexander Plunket to be chancellor; and Sir James Ormond, a half-brother of the earl, to be lord treasurer in the place of Kildare’s father-in-law, who had held that office for thirty-eight years. Kildare tried to exculpate himself, but his envoys were dismissed by the angry king, and the earl even begged his old rival Ormond to intercede on his behalf.

The family feud between the Butlers and Geraldines lay dormant for a while; Kildare had not only at that time asked for help from the chief of the hostile race, but he had even given his daughter Margaret in marriage to Piers Butler, a member of that family. In a quarrel between Piers Butler and that Sir James Ormond who had been singled out for Henry’s confidence, Kildare espoused the cause of his brother­in-law, and it came to a regular faction-fight in the streets of Dublin.

These events and the impression they created in England, and the promise of pardon if he would give up his son as a hostage for his good faith, induced Kildare at length, in May or June, 1493, to seek in person his pardon from the king. Henry invited him, and the other Irish nobles staying in London, to a banquet, and after he had mockingly assured them that next time they would let an ape be crowned, he caused them to be waited upon at table by their former king, Lambert Simnel. Lambert pledged them in a cup of wine, but, overcome by shame, none responded, and the wish was uttered that the devil had taken him before ever they saw his face. Only the jovial Lord Howth cried out to him: “Bring me the cup if the wine be good, and I shall drink it off for the wine’s sake and mine own sake also; and for thee, as thou art, so I leave thee—a poor innocent.”

The visit ended with the full pardon of the earl, on the 22nd of June, 1493, without, however, his being reinstated in his old office. This was given in September to Robert Preston, Viscount Gormanston, who had also been in London. The Archbishop of Dublin had been summoned to give more exact information to the king, and possibly in consequence of this, Kildare considered it prudent to take a fresh journey with a view to his justification, but he met with no further success, either for himself or for the cause he represented.

Henry did not consider a mere change in individuals sufficient, he resolved also on trying a change of system. The rule in Ireland by natives under English control should be set aside, and in its place should be adopted rule by Englishmen 'in closest union with the English Government; at the same time the boundary of authority should be extended beyond the Pale to the wild portions of Ireland. On the nth of September, 1494, the title of Lord-Lieutenant, which had been resigned by the Duke of Bedford, was bestowed on Henry, the second son of the king, while the trusty Sir Edward Poynings received the post of deputy, with ample powers bound only by the laws of England; Henry Dean, the bishop-elect of Bangor, became chancellor; Sir Hugh Conway, treasurer.

On the 13th of October, Poynings landed at Howth with about a thousand men. The Earl of Kildare, who till then had been detained in England, was among his followers. From Dublin Poynings advanced against Warbeck’s adherents in Ulster, and passed through the O’Hanlon’s country, laying waste as he went. Then it was that Kildare, embittered, perhaps, by the disappointment of his hopes, entered into treasonable relations with O’Hanlon and other chieftains against the deputy, and, together with the Earl of Desmond, proposed to the Scottish king a joint attack on the English power in Ireland. It was also ascribed to his instigation that his brother, James Fitzgerald, seized the castle of Carlow, and planted there the banner of the Geraldines, till Poynings compelled him to surrender, after a protracted siege. As winter was at hand, Poynings resolved to put an end to this campaign, which consisted of constant skirmishes in an inhospitable country, and in which the success his troops achieved was not at all commensurate with the money expended. For the future he adopted the more successful plan of making terms with the chieftains, by means of money payments.

On the 1st of December, 1494, he opened, in Drogheda, an Irish Parliament, which was to frame and legally establish the new system of government. The most important measures—the Statutes of Drogheda, or, Poynings Law—ordained that no Irish Parliament should be summoned and no Act passed without the previous approval of the English king, which was to be procured by the lieutenant or his council, and given under the great seal; further, they extended to Ireland the operation of all laws already enacted in England. Other measures granted the power to dismiss the officials and judges hitherto appointed for life; the authority of the Viceroy, which had been reduced as regarded the Crown, was strengthened still further in Ireland; liveried and paid retinues were forbidden, as also the battle-cry of the hostile families, the “Crom-abo” and “ Butler-abo,” and the right of coining enjoyed by the great nobles. Kildare, too, in consequence of his last act of high treason, was attainted by the Parliament, and when he appeared in Dublin, Poynings had him apprehended and brought to England.

It is remarkable that Poynings by this legislation placed the government of Ireland on an entirely fresh basis, which retained its validity as long as any Irish parliament was in existence; while only just before, he had been compelled to acknowledge, in his advance on Ulster, the insufficiency of his military powers to control the country by force of arms. For that, however, the power of the king, of which so much had been heard in France, sufficed, when Warbeck appeared again in the country. In vain Henry had sought to win over the Earl of Desmond with his followers, by offering him his pardon, and various customs dues. Desmond forthwith joined Warbeck, and assaulted the town of Water­ford from the land, while the latter’s fleet was attacking it from the sea. Poynings was supported by money and troops from England, ships had been fitted out, and as Dublin also gave assistance, he was able to relieve the garrison; the siege had to be raised after going on for eleven days, and Perkin was forced to sail away again with the loss of three ships.

Thus this danger, which was certainly not small, had been happily averted; still there was no relaxation in the work of providing for the future security of the country. In England itself Henry took active measures to this end, and, in September, 1495, caused a strict inquiry to be made con­cerning all the Irish, with their wives and children, living in the kingdom. As for Ireland itself, although its dependence had been in other ways increased, it was his special desire to make the island as independent of England, in matters of finance, as possible, so that the expenses of government should be met by the revenues of the country itself. Accordingly, the under­treasurer, Hattcliffe, had to send in an exact report on the extent and produce of the crown lands, on the average amount of receipts from tolls, fines, and other dues; he had to verify the accounts of officials, call in arrears, and ascertain the cause why the returns were delayed. Hattcliffe kept most exact accounts, but the first financial year showed, that Ireland could not produce even the cost of troops for the garrison, and Henry had to send over large sums for that pur­pose, and especially for Poynings’ compacts with the chieftains.

Even for so capable a man as Poynings, it was not possible really to carry out the new system of government. In January, 1496, he was recalled, the duties of his office were handed over to the chancellor; it may be that his own report led Henry to make fresh projects. Kildare too succeeded in regaining Henry’s confidence, which had been severely shaken, and, ignorant of all court ways, the Irishman brought his cause himself in somewhat rude fashion before the king. When the Bishop of Meath, who appeared as his accuser, cried out that all Ireland could not rule this man. Henry aptly rejoined, he then should rule all Ireland. The English parliament removed the ban from the Earl, he received a present of money, and was reinstated in his dignity as deputy on the 6th of August, 1496, which he continued to hold into the reign of Henry VIII. Thus, though Henry kept to the laws which had been proclaimed, he returned, so far as the question of persons was concerned, to the old form of self-government, and from that time the Earl of Kildare remained faithful. If Ireland did not quite become what the Statute of Drogheda required of her, she did not, at least, offer any further refuge and assistance to the Tudor’s enemies. That she should cease to play her former part against Henry was enough for him.

Wherever Perkin Warbeck had appeared, in Ireland, in France, or with Maximilian, he had called forth old and new animosities against Henry, and he constituted a danger wherever his wandering life led him. When driven from Ireland, he had taken refuge in Scotland, and his presence there at once caused the semblance of peace, which till then existed between England and her northern neighbour, to give way to open strife. In spite of truces and treaties of peace constantly renewed, the predatory war on the English and Scotch Border went on. A special subject of dispute was the Border fortress of Berwick, which had been mostly in English hands since the times of Edward I and III King James III had it in view when he began to take arms shortly after Henry’s accession, but a three years’ peace, from the 3rd of July, 1486, averted the danger; a matrimonial alliance was even in contemplation between the two royal Houses. The treaty of peace required that the disputed question of Berwick should be settled within a year; and as this was not done, the treaty fell to the ground in July, 1487; new settlements were made to take its place, but they led to nothing beyond the consoling prospect of a possible final agreement.

The old state of things continued. The victory over Simnel had protected England from immediate danger from the north; yet subsequently Henry considered it necessary to be always ready armed in case of attack. In spite of a provisional treaty of the 28th of November, 1487, the Scotch parliament urged more strongly in the following January its claims on Berwick, demanding that at least the fortifications should be demolished. Preparations were again being made for fresh negotiations, when the decisive catastrophe approached in Scotland itself. A party of rebel lords had managed to attract to their side the young heir to the throne. James III was declared deposed, and James IV was to be placed on the throne in his stead. Henry kept up relations with both sides, he negotiated at the same time with the king and with the rebels, before whom he even called the young prince by the name of king. For the moment a settlement seemed possible in Scotland, but soon the two armies stood again face to face, and in June, 1488, James III perished at Sauchieburn, not far from the renowned battlefield of Bannockburn ; he was murdered in a peasant’s hut, while trying to make his escape. Over the body of his father, James IV ascended the throne. He was only sixteen years of age.

Henry was on his guard against surprises, for the feeling in Scotland, even after the change of ruler, was anything but friendly. When the Scotch parliament resolved in October, 1488, that a wife should be sought for the young king in one of the courts of Europe, France, Brittany, and Spain, were named, but not England, in spite of the previous agreement on the subject; indeed, just at that time, when a war between England and France was imminent, Scotland renewed her “holy league and covenant” with England’s enemy. It was only a project, however, and the rumour which spoke of a treaty as already concluded was an error. On the 5th of October, 1488, a three years’ truce was once more agreed to, but mistrust and strife did not cease; from the Scotch side energetic measures on the border were insisted upon, while Henry, in May, 1490, ordered that all Scots, who were at all to be suspected, should be sent out of England.

Whilst James IV remained on good terms with Henry’s old enemy, Margaret of Burgundy, Henry on his side tried to take advantage of the perpetual quarrels between parties in Scotland. In January, 1489, the Master of Huntly addressed himself to Henry in the name of those who had formed the party of James III, to request his support and the punishment of the king’s murderers, and on the 17th of April, 1491, Henry even made a compact with John Ramsay, Lord Bothwell, and his friend Thomas Todd—who since the murder had been living in England—that they, in league with Earl Buchan, should get possession of the person of James IV, and also, if possible, of his brother the Duke of Ross, and deliver them up in England. This intrigue came to nothing; it serves only to illustrate the mutual relations of the two countries, for in spite of it and in spite of the simultaneous resumption of a projected covenant of the Scots with France, both sides, in the same month of April, resolved to treat for an extension of the armistice which was drawing to its close in October, 1491. Thus matters went on; the relations of Scotland and France became still more intimate towards the end of 1491 and beginning of 1492; Perkin Warbeck had no sooner appeared in the political world, in March, 1492, than he was at once regarded at the Scotch court as the son of King Edward IV, whilst, on the 16th of November, 1491, Henry made a similar but more important treaty than that with Lord Bothwell, with Archibald Douglas, the powerful Earl of Angus and his son George; both promised to promote a peace policy in Scotland and to combat those who were against it. The Earl of Angus belonged to the party that had overthrown James III, but the young king had withdrawn his confidence from his abettors in the insurrection. This com­pact of the earl with Henry shows how they retaliated. Apparently it was discovered in Scotland, for a part of his property was taken away from Angus and bestowed on Patrick, Lord Hailes, who had already been given the lands of the attainted lord of Bothwell, with the title Earl of Bothwell. Angus, however, was soon received into favour again by the king.

In spite of these hostile covenants, a treaty was again made on the 21st of December, 1491, which Henry, but not James, confirmed; almost exactly the same settlement was then come to on the 3rd of November, 1492, and on the 25th of June, 1493, the peace was extended to seven years. Henry even acknowledged that the last treaty had been violated more seriously by the English than by the Scotch; he promised to pay £1000 in compensating. Nothing testifies more forcibly to the weakness and unreliability of these treaties of peace than the great number of them, the necessary negotiations which accompanied them, and the constant com­plaints of violation. It was not to be imagined that the promised peace would really last till the year 1501: some crisis only was needed to expose to the light of day the real condition of affairs. This was supplied by Perkin Warbeck.

How far an agreement had existed between James and Perkin since the first overtures in March, 1492, is not known; but in June, 1495, we find Scotch ambassadors taking part in the preparations for the expedition from the Netherlands. Henry was kept fully in­formed of the plans of the king of Scots in connection with Perkin, either through Clifford from the Netherlands, or more probably through his Scotch friend Bothwell, who, why or how we know not, had received permission to return home, but still continued to draw his English allowance. Orders were issued in the northern counties to arm and be ready; once again, indeed, an attempt was made at a peaceful settlement, but without any hope of success.

In England, at first, no one knew where the adventurer, when driven out of Ireland, had taken refuge. James, however, who had demanded contributions from his subjects for the support of Perkin, was making preparations at Stirling to give him a suitable reception, where, on the 27th of November, 1495, he appeared with his English followers. An attack on England was shortly afterwards arranged; Perkin wrote to the Earl of Desmond for aid; in Scotland preparations for war were begun, but in spite of the hopeful reports circulated abroad, nothing at first was done. James showed himself now and then in company with his guest, whom he entertained like a prince, and to whom he even gave in marriage a kinswoman of his own, Katherine Gordon, the daughter of the Earl of Huntley. In words of admiration, full of poetic enthusiasm, Perkin Warbeck writes to the lady of his heart; “whose face, bright and serene, gives splendour to the cloudy sky, whose eyes, brilliant as the stars, make all pain to be forgotten, and turn despair into delight; whosoever sees her cannot choose but admire her, admiring, cannot choose but love her, loving, cannot choose but obey her.” Yet the beauty of the adored fair lady did not make Perkin forget her riches and her rank, she seems to him “not born in our days, but descended from heaven.” Such wooing found a hearing. The fair Scotch lady remained the faithful companion of his wanderings, till he was captured and his imposture completely unmasked.

Henry meant to attack James with the same weapons, when he tried to get into his hands John Stuart, Duke of Albany, the king’s cousin, then living in France. It was, of course, far more important for him to get possession of the pretender himself; he turned therefore to his old friends the Lords of Bothwell and Buchan; but in spite of their encouraging words, nothing came of it, and the king could only console himself with the news of the strong resistance which James’ projects were encountering from the Scotch nobles and people. Perkin also had some reinforcements from England, besides a small company which came to him from Flanders in two ships, so that in September, 1496, he had gathered about fourteen hundred men around him. James, however, would not give his help for nothing, and after some debate, they agreed together that if Perkin were victorious, Berwick should be surrendered and a payment of £50,000 be made.

With an unscrupulousness that was almost naive, Bothwell reported to Henry all that went on, the strength of the troops, the amount of artillery, and tried to stir him up to an energetic assault on his own sovereign. He was not misrepresenting matters when he said that the Scotch were setting about the enterprise with quite inadequate means; moreover, amongst the men who on this occasion were giving their counsel were to be found the very keenest partisans of the enemy, as Bothwell’s own example proves.

King James kept to his plans, in spite of all the attempts to dissuade him. Herein it was especially to the interest of Spain, as in the case of Maximilian, to ward off complications which should delay Henry’s joining the League. In 1488, James IV had already to make terms with the Spanish king and queen, and the year following they offered him a not very honourable alliance, with a natural daughter of Ferdinand, but in 1495, another marriage was talked of, when Scotch ambassadors sued for the hand of an Infanta for their master. Ferdinand and Isabella pretended to agree to this, but they required in return that Scotland should join the League., should give up the pretender, and make peace with England. Pope Alexander exhorted James to comply. All they gained was at the most promises of peace, which were not kept.

A genuine but somewhat feeble attempt at mediation, made at the last moment by France, through the Lord of Concressault, had no better success. The envoy, in accordance with Charles VIII’s promise to Henry, declined to pledge his master to any actual interference, for he did not mean to irritate Henry and drive him into the arms of the League. Instead, however—and this was an idea the Spaniards at that time entertained for themselves— Concressault tried to bring about the surrender of Perkin to France, and offered 100,000 crowns. Henry knew of these plans. Bothwell, indeed, did not quite trust the French ambassador, who was often in secret company with Perkin, perhaps in the hope of inducing the latter to escape to Charles of his own accord.

If Henry reminded the French king of the help promised to him, he was not thinking of the literal fulfilment of this promise, he was only hoping that such threats might frighten James; Concressault’s mission was to satisfy his demands outwardly at least. However, the Frenchman had as little success with the Scotch king as had the Spaniards.

But Henry did not rely upon the ever-doubtful help of his good friends, he took care of himself. On the 14th of October, 1495, a new parliament met, after an interval of three years, and its very first measure promised protection to all who, in the event of a rebellion, remained firm to their duty and supported the king de facto. Henry’s adherents might very well say to each other that, in spite of this seeming security, a victorious Yorkist prince would repeal the law, and thus the measure proved to be in fact chiefly a conciliatory one to original Yorkist partisans; for from the benefit of the statute only such were excluded who should afterwards desert the king. Further, Parliament assigned by law a fixed income for keeping up the fortifications of the border towns of Berwick and Carlisle. Henry did not claim any special grant this time, it seemed to satisfy him that his parliament gave him power to collect like taxes such contributions towards the last benevolence as had remained unpaid, and that alienated crown lands, and above all, the property of the numerous outlawed rebels, should be adjudged to him; besides these, he received a tenth from the convocation of the clergy.

If Henry really considered the danger which was threatening him from Scotland so trifling as he gave Charles of France to understand, the sequel proved him right, for the long-planned enterprise was after all but an ordinary raid, such as the border counties had often had to endure. In the middle of September, 1496, the incursion took place, announced by a wordy proclamation from Perkin, full of promises of good government and full of hatred for Henry, for whose head he offered as a reward £1000 and a large income from land. He even promised that his companions, the Scots, would do no harm to his future subjects; but these companions did not trouble themselves much about this, they burnt and laid waste to their heart’s content. If he and James were reckoning on a rising for the Yorkist cause in the uncertain north of England, this mode of warfare did not tend to attract men to their party. The enterprise was badly prepared and badly conducted. The Scots ventured on no encounter, and quite four days before the English forces actually started from Carlisle, the mere intelligence of their approach made the Scots retreat in the greatest haste. On the 2ist of September, Perkin stood again on Scottish ground at Coldstream; and thus all ended in most pitiable failure.

Still James did not give up his protégé; just as before he had rejected the enticing offers of France, now also he kept true to Warbeck, when the hopes founded upon him had been so bitterly disappointed. We cannot help thinking that James really believed in the impostor, in any case Perkin Warbeck’s personality charmed him. Judging from the astonishing impression which Warbeck seems to have made on the people with whom he came in contact, he must have possessed, besides his attractive outward appearance, a particularly winning manner; that letter to his lady-love, if it was really his own, is a composition which bears no bad testimony to the gifts of a wandering youth of humble origin. His fearless, romantic, and adventurous audacity charmed the Stuart king, and touched a responsive chord in him. The youthful monarch was himself imbued with a chivalrous spirit, bold and straightforward, of a character that won the highest esteem from Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, but, like almost all the men of his house, he was deficient in the gifts of statesmanship and forethought. The pretender’s adventure attracted him, though the utter hopelessness of it was clear as day; he remained firmly and honourably true to his protégé, and was even bound to him by ties of personal affection. Thus Perkin and his followers remained in Scotland, and lived at the king’s expense till the summer of the next year.

At this time a danger arose for Henry in England, threatening to shake his very throne, and well calculated to inspire the two friends with the most exultant hope. The English king had issued a proclamation declaring James had broken the peace, and that henceforth war would prevail between their two kingdoms. He prepared for the struggle in the most energetic manner. In order to secure the money required, he did not summon a formal Parliament, but, according to an ancient custom, a “great council,” to which he invited, besides the Lords, “certain burgesses and merchants from all towns and parishes in England.” They sat from the 24th of October till the 5th of November, 1496, and voted the king a grant of £120,000 for the war.

This was not a legal grant, but rather the guarantee of one from a kind of preliminary Parliament, intended to give Henry the credit necessary for a loan, which he forthwith solicited throughout the country, and which finally brought him in £58,000. The arming by land and sea had begun in December, then on the 16th of January, 1497, the Estates assembled at Westminster. The chancellor, Morton, at the opening ceremony, quoted examples from the history of Rome of mustering subjects for the defence of the kingdom, and warning them against rebellion and civil war. It was only, he said, on account of the Scots’ breach of the peace that writs for a fresh election had been so soon issued.

This Parliament did really pass a few measures, but its main object was the confirmation of that grant, for which the very same men who were now assembled in Parliament had given their voice. The Commons enlarged both on the breach of the peace and on the violation of the allegiance of the Scottish vassal—an antiquated claim which had been enforced in former days; and they granted to the king two whole fifteenths and tenths payable on the ensuing 31st of May and 8th of November, and, for the further prosecution of the war, a second tax of like severity, without even the abatements made from the first; but no one was to be assessed who possessed less than twenty shillings rent from land, or less than twenty marks in personal property; the clergy also voted specially heavy taxes. On the 13th of March Parliament was dissolved.

A heavy demand had been made upon the country, and though the poor had been exempted from it as much as possible, the tax-collectors probably did not always act with the prescribed moderation. When they came to Cornwall, they were met with open resistance. The rough inhabitants of this extreme south­west portion of the kingdom lived far from the Scottish Border and the dangers in the north; they were only conscious of the burden laid upon them for a cause that was indifferent to them. Clever agitators at once made use of the first indication of disturbance, and gave it a definite aim. They asserted they were not drawing the sword against the king, that their whole hatred was directed against his counsellors. A lawyer, Thomas Flammock, and a blacksmith, Michael Joseph, put themselves at the head, and led the mob to London. At Wells they found a new captain, in the person of a nobleman, James Touchet, Lord Audley, who, having lost his patrimony, turned rebel from vexation. The town of Bristol refusing to grant them admission, the insurgents passed on through Winchester and Salisbury to Kent. The men of Kent stood in bad repute in consequence of the earlier popular risings under Wat Tyler and Cade, but quite lately they had shown themselves loyal, and held out against Perkin Warbeck’s followers. Now a body of men was quickly collected together under the Earl of Kent and other nobles to oppose the Cornishmen. The first reverse discouraged many of the insurgents; a portion of them were already beginning to run away, when the ringleaders pressed on to the capital for the decisive encounter.

Here the king was expecting them. The startling news of the rising had reached him at the beginning of June, just as he was busily arming against the Scots, when great sums for pay had been despatched to the north, and Lord Daubeney was already on his way thither with the troops that had been collected. He at once received the order to return, the whole fighting force was brought to bear on the enemy at home, and the muster from the border counties was to suffice against any possible attack from Scotland. The nobility from the neighbourhood of London came with their followers into the capital. Daubeney’s arrival on the 13th of June relieved the citizens from great anxiety. On the following day a division of his troops encountered in a skirmish the rebels who were approaching from the south-west by Guildford. A secret message from someone among their ranks betrayed a distrust of their leaders. Daubeney had been drawn up in St. George’s Fields since the 15th, a Thursday. On the Friday he pushed forward to reconnoitre as far as Kingston, and joined the king on his return, so that about twenty-five thousand men were massed together against fifteen thousand rebels.

On the Friday afternoon the Cornishmen appeared, and encamped on Blackheath, lying under the dark shadow of its elms to the south-east of London, a spot where formerly rebel armies had also pitched their tents. It was with difficulty that the leaders kept up the failing courage of their men; they prepared to hold the bridge, which led westward from the foot of the hill over the Deptford brook. On the morning of the Saturday, the 17th of June, 1497, Henry ordered his troopers and archers, under the command of the Earl of Oxford, to surround the enemy’s position on the right flank and the rear, in order to cut off his retreat. Daubeney, with the bulk of the troops, attacked the bridge ; the king brought up the rear-guard. The rebels fought with desperate bravery. Even Daubeney was for the moment made prisoner; but when they saw themselves taken in the rear and in flank they held out no longer. About a thousand were left on the field; the rest, among them the three leaders, surrendered.

After the battle, at about two o’clock in the afternoon, the king rode into the town, where the mayor, John Tate, and the aldermen, attired in scarlet, awaited him; after thanking them for the maintenance of the troops, which had been undertaken by the town, Henry knighted on the spot the mayor, one sheriff, and the recorder. He then betook himself to St. Paul’s to offer up thanks, and from thence to the Tower, where on the Monday the three rebel leaders were brought before the king and council.

Only these three suffered the penalty of the law; all the rest received the king’s pardon. On Monday, the 26th, the blacksmith and Flammock were sentenced, and on the day following hanged at Tyburn, their bodies quartered, and their heads cut off; on the Wednesday, Lord Audley, attired in a paper coat, on which his arms were painted, was led through the streets in a mock procession from Newgate to Tower Hill, and there beheaded. The heads of the victims were stuck up on London Bridge, and over the four gates of the city, the quarters of Flammock’s body ; the blacksmith’s remains were sent to Cornwall and Devonshire.

The sedition had now been completely quelled, but the effect it produced outside the country was bad. Henry felt conscious of this, and did his best to counteract it. All thought of revenge on Scotland was forgotten, in view of these serious disturbances in his own kingdom; he was even prepared to make sacrifices to ensure peace. He had already, in the year 1493, offered the Scotch king marriage with a distant kinswoman of his mother, but had treated the matter with indifference, when the offer was passed over in silence. In June, 1495, he took a more decided step, by making the first proposition of a marriage which was to be of great importance for Great Britain’s future—the marriage of his daughter Margaret with King James; several times, in May, June, and again on the 2nd of September, 1496, he issued powers for these marriage negotiations, but they seem to have come to nothing.

James held back; his own proposals were such as Henry could not accept. After the treaty of peace had been broken in September, 1496, Henry was thinking seriously of a war of retaliation, when his mind was diverted by the Cornish rising. Notwithstanding his victory, he dreaded another war, and above all the necessity of renewed taxation, after his recent experience. On the 4th of July, 1497, he sent Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, accompanied by William Warham and John Cartington, as plenipotentiary, to Scotland. At the same time he assumed a threatening attitude, and issued the order that all the Scots living in his kingdom should be expelled or pay a heavy fine; and £12,000 out of the last subsidy went towards arming for war in the north. Meanwhile Fox was to arrange that Perkin should be given up and an embassage of peace de­spatched from Scotland, for it was necessary that England, as the stronger, should keep up appearances, and not make the first formal overtures of peace; a personal meeting between the monarchs was also proposed. Henry was ready indeed to forego the surrender of Warbeck, and to make still greater concessions ; only peace there must be now at any price—all other matters might be settled later on. The motives, how­ever, which urged Henry to peace, tempted James to war. Possibly the danger created by the rebel host marching to the very gates of London seemed greater than it really was ; in any case the opportunity was favourable. The expense of Warbeck’s maintenance also, and the constant opposition of his own nobles, may have urged the king to venture on a decisive move. So Henry’s efforts for peace, as well as those of the Spaniards, who tried to mediate between the parties, were in vain.

In the summer of 1496, Ferdinand and Isabella had again despatched Don Pedro de Ayala on a special mission to Scotland, but their ambassador arrived too late to be able to prevent the invasion. They tried to attract James by the pretended offer of a marriage, and in order again to free themselves from this promise with a good grace, they proposed to Henry that he should give his daughter to James, probably without knowing of the king’s own plan. They offered Ayala’s services as mediator. They were honestly anxious for peace, and when they heard of the warlike preparations of the English, they warned them of the uncertain fortunes of war; still they had in the background their own selfish ends, and their primary aim, as it had been before with the French king, was to get Warbeck into their own hands.

Henry had already felt some suspicion of his Spanish friends, on account of their relations with Warbeck, and events proved he was not altogether mistaken. Their London ambassador, Puebla, had first suggested the design with regard to the impostor, but in order to keep Henry in the dark if possible, any intention of the kind was disclaimed even to Puebla himself. In October, 1496, Warbeck begged a Yorkist partisan in Spain to do something for him, especially to let him know the sentiments of the king and queen. The answer was brought by Ayala, who was then anxious to prevail upon James to give Warbeck up, and who offered him compensation for all the expense he had incurred. Above all, he tried to gain Perkin himself; he put before him the inevitable reconciliation between the English and Scotch, the fate which would then await him, and offered him a safe refuge in Spain. He brought with him a carefully prepared plan, that Perkin should sail to Ireland, where Spanish fishing-boats would take him aboard; time and place were fixed upon.

But James would not be led astray, he held firmly to his friend; Warbeck, however, acted less honourably, hoping to get help from both sides and ready to deceive both when the time came. The King of Scots, who was already sending the links of his gold chain to the mint to be turned into coin to supply his failing funds, was arming for a double assault, —he was to attack by land, Perkin by sea. As they might reckon on the insurgent Cornishmen aiding Perkin, and as money was scarce, they only made ready one ship for him, at Ayr, in the Firth of Clyde; but the two boldest pirates of that time, Andrew and Robert Barton, joined him there in their own vessel, and the captain of a Breton merchant ship was induced, either willingly or by force, to take part in the expedition.

At the beginning of July, 1497, Warbeck set sail; James waited for some weeks, and then in August, when he might hope that Perkin was on the march, advanced on the Border fortress, Norham on Tweed, devastating the plain with his scouring parties as he went.

Henry was better prepared than before. Whilst Norham made a successful resistance, the Earl of Surrey advanced from Yorkshire with nearly twenty thousand men to its relief, and a fleet under Lord Broke put to sea. James had scarcely expected this, and as nothing was heard of Perkin’s advance, he turned back again. Before August was over, Surrey, crossing the Scotch Border in pursuit, took various strongholds, amongst them, after a sharp bombardment, Ayton, lying to the north of Berwick. James did not venture to relieve it; in chivalrous fashion, he offered to fight the earl in single combat for the possession of Berwick, but the earl, as the servant of his king, refused this form of decision; bad weather, and difficulties in provisioning his forces, obliged Surrey to turn homewards at the end of a week, and to discharge his troops in Berwick.

The warlike King of Scots had received a sharp lesson ; and as Henry’s friendly overtures still went on, and Warbeck had shamefully disappointed all the hopes set on him, negotiations were at once begun. Ayala fulfilled his office of mediator ; the Spanish marriage still remained his bait for James, and so at last, on the 30th of September, 1497, at Ayton, the place lately so fiercely contested, they agreed to a seven years’ treaty, which, however, was framed exactly on the model of the usual temporary English and Scotch treaties, and in no way met the special wishes of the English. To Ayala, who had been expressly appointed mediator, was entrusted the further settlement of various disputed points, and he managed to arrange, in London, on the 5th of December, an extension of the peace for the lifetime of the two sovereigns; the public announcement was at once made in London.

The fate of the faithless Warbeck was also sealed. When he reckoned on making use of both Scots and Spaniards for his own advantage, he was completely mistaken. As Ayala had planned, Perkin, accompanied by his courageous wife, sailed for Ireland; but against Ayala’s wish, who could hardly have countenanced hostilities against England, he allowed himself to be led astray by Sir James Ormond, then an enemy to Henry, and set up his claim again in Ireland. A Spanish knight, Don Pedro de Guevara, who with his two brothers had been in the service of Maximilian and of the Archduke Philip, joined him. A simultaneous movement had been frustrated by delay; for James began hostilities while Warbeck was still loitering in Ireland.

But there could be no longer any hope of success in that country ; for Kildare now held to the king, and Desmond, who two years before had refused Perkin’s request for help, had also made his peace with Henry, a fact of which Perkin must have been aware. On the 25th of July, 1497, he landed at Cork, the same place where he had made his first appearance. There he was received by his old friend, John Walter; even men of good position in Cornwall, and also in Devonshire, now entered into communication with him, for in spite of the victory at Black­heath and the leniency then shown, seditious feeling in these counties was not yet subdued, and a prospect was held out to him of a favourable reception and willing support.

For more than a month, Warbeck remained in Ireland. Towards the end of July, the citizens of Waterford, getting news of his presence and of his intentions with regard to Cornwall, sent word to the king; yet, it was only after some hesitation that they endeavoured to obey his command to get possession of Perkin. Whilst Kildare and Desmond were trying to catch the pretender, the men of Waterford despatched four ships after him; Walter, aware of the peril to his friend, conveyed him secretly in a boat to Kinsale, where three Spanish merchant vessels, possibly those provided by Ayala, awaited him. Warbeck induced the captain, a Spaniard from San Sebastian, to take him over to Cornwall. His ship was seized by the king’s men, but the crew hid Perkin in a cask in the ship’s hold, and in spite of the high reward offered, denied that he was there. On the 7th of September, 1497, Warbeck landed safely in Whitsand Bay, in the extreme south-west of Cornwall.

The king, meanwhile, had had sufficient time to prepare. Lord Daubeney was sent to the west by land, Lord Broke by sea. The pretender quickly gathered a following among the disturbed population of Cornwall and Devon; on the 17th of September, a Sunday, he appeared before Exeter at the head of a force of six to eight thousand men. Refused admission, he began to storm the town; he was repulsed, and failed in a renewed attack on the following day. He turned towards Taunton, but hearing that Daubeney’s forces were drawn up only a few miles to the north, near Glastonbury, his courage failed him; he stole away secretly at midnight on the 21st of September, with a few companions, and finally, finding the coast guarded, he fled to the sanctuary of the convent church of Beaulieu, near Southampton. A thousand marks were set upon his head. The pursuers, who had followed him on horseback, tracked him thither, where, since there was no chance of escape and he was assured of pardon from the king, after a short parley he surrendered with his companions, Heron, Skelton, and Ashley.

On the 4th of October, Henry had come to Taunton ; on the 5th, Perkin was brought before him, and made a full confession. He followed the king to Exeter, whither his wife, whom he had left behind when he made his way to the coast, was brought. She was treated in the most lenient manner; Henry received her graciously, ordered £20 to be at once paid to her, and sent her under safe escort to the queen at Sheen.

The betrayed Cornish people had dispersed after the flight of their leader, and when the repentant inhabitants of Devon appeared before the king, begging for mercy, he only reserved the ringleaders for punishment, and allowed the bulk of the insurgents to go their way; his commissioners did the same in Cornwall. But the guilty did not escape scot-free; many of them had, the next year, to purchase their pardon with a large sum of money; and even in the year 1500, many were sued for arrears, and some thousands of pounds thus swept into the king’s coffers. The citizens of Waterford were graciously rewarded by the grant of special privileges.

Henry did not honour the captive impostor with further attention. Now at last, in his extremity, the pretended king’s son remembered his old parents in Tournay, and wrote a melancholy letter to his mother, full of anxiety as to his approaching fate. He did not, however, forget to beg for money wherewith to dispose his gaolers more favourably towards him.

Journeying slowly homewards, Henry arrived at Westminster on the 27th of November. Along the way the people ran together to stare at Perkin; at Westminster he had again to repeat his confession before the town authorities, then he was led through the city to the Tower. Behind him followed a man in fetters, a servant of the king, who, having deserted with another companion, was executed as a traitor at Tyburn on the 4th of December. Meanwhile for Warbeck, as a foreigner, and not guilty of treason to his own lord, a mild captivity was reserved. Attendants were appointed to keep constant guard over him. The following month a dwelling was even assigned to him in the king’s palace, and a horse kept for him at Henry’s expense.

His wife, the companion of his last adventurous voyage, remained separated from him. Possibly the love of the high­born Scotchwoman had received a severe shock, when she learnt that her husband was an ordinary impostor of humble origin, who, besides, at the decisive moment had fled, like a coward. She was honourably entertained at court; Henry often paid small sums for her wardrobe. She subsequently married a Welshman, Sir Matthew Cradock, and from her only daughter are descended the Earls of Pembroke. After her death Lady Katharine was buried by the side of her second husband in the church at Swansea on the south coast of Wales.

But the leniency that had been shown him did not tame Warbeck’s restless spirit. On the 9th of June, 1498, he made a foolish attempt at escape. He deceived his guards, and fled at midnight. The very next day the king’s order came to watch the seaports, and a hundred pounds were offered for his arrest. Warbeck, finding his escape was cut off on all sides, took refuge from his pursuers in the monastery at Sheen, and begged the prior to intercede for him with the king. Here also his personal charm must have had its effect, for the prior complied, and the king again granted Warbeck his life. The morning after the 15th of June he was publicly set in the stocks at Westminster, exposed to the jeers of the populace. At the same time he had to read out his confession, as he had made it at Taunton before Henry, and at Westminster before the town authorities. Three days subsequently he had to repeat this in London itself, in Cheapside. He was then kept in the Tower, “so that he sees neither sun nor moon, in such fashion that he will never, with God’s help, be able to play such another trick again.” Those who saw him in this close confinement were struck by the alteration in his appearance.

Severity, however, restrained him as little as kindness. In the Tower he managed to get into communication with other prisoners, among them some of his former companions. But what was more important, they got hold of the Earl of Warwick, who was still shut up there. It was with his name that Warbeck was to have begun his imposture, now the name and person of the royal prisoner were to give new stability to the shaky credit of the adventurer. Warwick, whose mind had no doubt been weakened by long confinement, was only a tool in the hands of the others; with no suspicion of the importance of what he was doing, he said “Yes” to everything.

The plans of the conspirators, when discovered, seemed but little dangerous to king and State; the only real danger for Henry lay in Warwick, the most innocent of the party. He, the last male descendant of the house of York, had seen his name made use of in nearly all the intrigues against the Tudor; in his name Simnel’s rising took place, and the scheme of the Abbot of Abingdon; with his name the plot was concocted in which Warbeck took part; and now, to his misfortune, after Warbeck’s second capture, a fresh impostor tried to misuse his name in the same way as Simnel had done. Under the guidance of Patrick, an Augustinian friar, a young man named Ralph Wilford began, in Kent, to confide to various individuals that he was the Earl of Warwick; but before definite action could be taken, teacher and pupil were caught, and the latter executed on the 12th of February, 1499, while Patrick, being protected by his order, was condemned, like Simons, to imprisonment for life.

It seemed as if Warwick’s existence was once more to be brought before Henry’s eyes as a constantly threatening danger. This last attempt, insignificant as it was, must have made a deep impression on him, for rather more than a month after Wilford’s execution, the Spaniard Puebla reports that Henry seemed in two weeks to have aged by twenty years. It was then the resolve was probably taken that Warwick must be put to death on the first opportunity. This occurred shortly afterwards, and probably the farce of the new con­spiracy was purposely allowed to be played a little longer. A certain Cleymound, and Astwood who had been spared in January, 1495, were the chief plotters; they wanted to get possession of the Tower and set it on fire, in order, in the confusion, to escape themselves with the treasure, and to collect troops with the money. But all they really did was, that Cleymound procured a dagger for the earl.

On the 2nd of August, 1499, the great plan was agreed upon by Cleymound and Astwood with Warwick; they got into communication with Warbeck, who was lodged underneath them, for they wanted to “raise the said Peter to be king and lord, and rob the king of his crown and dignity.” Possibly the traitor was Cleymound, who accused Perkin himself of being the informer, and who, in spite of his very decided share in the affair, was pardoned. On the 16th of November Perkin was tried in Whitehall, together with his earliest confederates, Walter and Taylor, who had likewise been taken, and they were condemned “to be drawn on hurdles from the Tower to Tyburn, there to be hanged, and cut down quickly, their bowels to be taken out and burnt, their heads cut off, their bodies quartered, and the heads and quarters to be disposed of at the king’s pleasure.” On the 23rd of November the sentence was carried out in a milder form on Perkin and Walter. A low scaffold had been erected at Tyburn, from which Warbeck spoke once more to the numerous crowd standing round. He said he was a foreigner born, “accordyng unto his former confession, and took it upon his dethe that he was never this persone that he was named, for that is to say the second son of Kyng Edward the IVth. And that he was forced to take upon hym by the meanes of the said John a Water and other, wherefor he asked God and the Kyng of forgiveness. After which con­fession he took his dethe meekly, and was there upon the gallows hanged and with him the said John a Water. And when they were dede tayken downe, and their hede striken of and after their bodies brought to the friars Augustynes, and there buryed, and their hedes fixed after upon London Brigge.” Perkin Warbeck ended his adventurous career at the age of twenty-five.

Previous to Warbeck’s execution, the Earl of Warwick, with Astwood and Cleymound, had been brought to trial. The grand jury discharged a not very easy task when they extracted a great plot from the evidence laid before them. The proceedings against the other accomplices followed, but of the five commoners who were found guilty, only two, one of them Astwood, were executed, on the 4th of December. The finding of the jury against Warwick was sent to the Earl of Oxford, under whose presidency had met the court of peers, consisting of one duke, five earls, and sixteen barons. On the 21st of November, in Westminster Hall, they pronounced sentence on the accused, who himself acknowledged his guilt, and on the 28th he was beheaded on Tower Hill. Henry had him laid beside his forefathers in the neighbourhood of Windsor. It was no doubt hard for the king to resolve on carrying out the sentence; he preferred a conciliatory policy to a policy of revenge, and would much rather pardon than condemn ; but it probably seemed to him a bitter necessity for his own preservation, and he felt obliged to disregard the murmurs and discontent among the people. That feeling, however, was a right one which moved the minds of the populace— regret that Warwick, who was so much to be pitied, should have had to die, an innocent victim to his ancestry.

CHAPTER IV.

RELATIONS WITH FOREIGN POWERS 1495-1503 — THE SPANISH AND THE SCOTCH MARRIAGES.