第98章 ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH(2)

Killed in that gloomy prison;but I escaped-it don't matter how,at present-and have been wandering about the world for seven long years.'This explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of the Irish people,they began again to shout and to hurrah,and to drink his health,and to make the noisy and thirsty demonstrations all over again.And the big chieftain in Dublin began to look out for another coronation,and another young King to be carried home on his back.

Now,King Henry being then on bad terms with France,the French King,Charles the Eighth,saw that,by pretending to believe in the handsome young man,he could trouble his enemy sorely.So,he invited him over to the French Court,and appointed him a body-guard,and treated him in all respects as if he really were the Duke of York.Peace,however,being soon concluded between the two Kings,the pretended Duke was turned adrift,and wandered for protection to the Duchess of Burgundy.She,after feigning to inquire into the reality of his claims,declared him to be the very picture of her dear departed brother;gave him a body-guard at her Court,of thirty halberdiers;and called him by the sounding name of the White Rose of England.

The leading members of the White Rose party in England sent over an agent,named Sir Robert Clifford,to ascertain whether the White Rose's claims were good:the King also sent over his agents to inquire into the Rose's history.The White Roses declared the young man to be really the Duke of York;the King declared him to be PERKIN WARBECK,the son of a merchant of the city of Tournay,who had acquired his knowledge of England,its language and manners,from the English merchants who traded in Flanders;it was also stated by the Royal agents that he had been in the service of Lady Brompton,the wife of an exiled English nobleman,and that the Duchess of Burgundy had caused him to be trained and taught,expressly for this deception.The King then required the Archduke Philip-who was the sovereign of Burgundy-to banish this new Pretender,or to deliver him up;but,as the Archduke replied that he could not control the Duchess in her own land,the King,in revenge,took the market of English cloth away from Antwerp,and prevented all commercial intercourse between the two countries.

He also,by arts and bribes,prevailed on Sir Robert Clifford to betray his employers;and he denouncing several famous English noblemen as being secretly the friends of Perkin Warbeck,the King had three of the foremost executed at once.Whether he pardoned the remainder because they were poor,I do not know;but it is only too probable that he refused to pardon one famous nobleman against whom the same Clifford soon afterwards informed separately,because he was rich.This was no other than Sir William Stanley,who had saved the King's life at the battle of Bosworth Field.It is very doubtful whether his treason amounted to much more than his having said,that if he were sure the young man was the Duke of York,he would not take arms against him.Whatever he had done he admitted,like an honourable spirit;and he lost his head for it,and the covetous King gained all his wealth.

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years;but,as the Flemings began to complain heavily of the loss of their trade by the stoppage of the Antwerp market on his account,and as it was not unlikely that they might even go so far as to take his life,or give him up,he found it necessary to do something.Accordingly he made a desperate sally,and landed,with only a few hundred men,on the coast of Deal.But he was soon glad to get back to the place from whence he came;for the country people rose against his followers,killed a great many,and took a hundred and fifty prisoners:who were all driven to London,tied together with ropes,like a team of cattle.Every one of them was hanged on some part or other of the sea-shore;in order,that if any more men should come over with Perkin Warbeck,they might see the bodies as a warning before they landed.

Then the wary King,by making a treaty of commerce with the Flemings,drove Perkin Warbeck out of that country;and,by completely gaining over the Irish to his side,deprived him of that asylum too.He wandered away to Scotland,and told his story at that Court.King James the Fourth of Scotland,who was no friend to King Henry,and had no reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him more than once;but had never succeeded in his plots),gave him a great reception,called him his cousin,and gave him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon,a beautiful and charming creature related to the royal house of Stuart.

Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender,the King still undermined,and bought,and bribed,and kept his doings and Perkin Warbeck's story in the dark,when he might,one would imagine,have rendered the matter clear to all England.But,for all this bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's Court,he could not procure the Pretender to be delivered up to him.James,though not very particular in many respects,would not betray him;

And the ever-busy Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms,and good soldiers,and with money besides,that he had soon a little army of fifteen hundred men of various nations.With these,and aided by the Scottish King in person,he crossed the border into England,and made a proclamation to the people,in which he called the King 'Henry Tudor;'offered large rewards to any who should take or distress him;and announced himself as King Richard the Fourth come to receive the homage of his faithful subjects.