Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

At Nottingham, Henry received an embassy from the King of the Scots; and despatching his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, with about 3,000 men in pursuit of Lord Lovel, on the 6th of April he quitted Northampton in the same direction. At Pontefract he was met, on the 17th, by the news that Lovel had passed him on the road, had raised a force in the neighbourhood of Ripon and Middleham, and was preparing to surprise him on his entrance into York. Henry's courage did not fail him; he was now surrounded by most of the northern and southern nobility, who had brought up considerable forces. But the man who always trusted more to his shrewd knowledge of human nature than to arms, now hit on a means of dispersing the insurgent army without a blow. He sent on his uncle, Jasper of Bedford, to offer a free pardon to all who would desert Lovel's standard, and the whole host dispersed as by magic. It was, in fact, the magic of the right incentive applied at the right moment. Lovel, who was as much affected by the proclamation of pardon as his followers—for it instantly struck him with the fear of universal desertion—fled at once to the house of his friend, Sir Thomas Broughton, in Lancashire; and, after lying concealed there some days, contrived to escape to the court of the Duchess of Burgundy, in Flanders. Some of his followers, as it would seem, in defiance of the king's offer of pardon, were seized and executed by the Earl of Northumberland.

On the 30th of September the queen was prematurely delivered of a son, who, however, was pronounced a strong and healthy child, and was christened by the name of Arthur, after Prince Arthur of the ancient Britons, from whom Henry pretended to derive his descent. But the birth of an heir-apparent tried too severely the temper of the numerous malcontents who still existed. Though Henry had put himself to much trouble, and to some cost, to win over the people of the northern counties, his conduct in general had not been such as to conciliate the enemies of the Lancastrian line.

However, the Yorkist party, though roused to disturb the quiet of the king, prepared their measures of annoyance with a lack of acumen which was more likely to irritate than overturn. Perhaps they did not want to dethrone him, because that would overturn also the head, and most popular representative of their own party—Elizabeth; especially as she was now the mother of a legitimate prince, capable of uniting all interests. Perhaps they wished rather to show the cold and unforgiving monarch that he was more at their mercy than he supposed, and that they could embitter, if they did not proceed to terminate, his reign. Such, in fact, whether this was their purpose or not, were the character and tendency of the plots and impostures which, for so many years, kept Henry in disquiet and anxiety.

The first attempt was to bring forward a youth as the Earl of Warwick, the son of Clarence, whom Henry was keeping confined in the Tower. So little depth was there in this plot, that at first it was evidently the plan to bring the impostor forward as the Duke of York, the younger of the two princes supposed to be murdered in the Tower. It was given out that though his elder brother had been murdered, the younger had been allowed to escape. Had this story been adhered to, and well acted, it might have raised a most formidable rebellion; but, for some unknown reason, it was as speedily abandoned as adopted, and the Earl of Warwick pitched upon as the preferable impersonation. Nothing, however, could be more absurd, for the true earl being really alive, Henry could at any moment bring him forward.

Towards the close of the year 1486, there appeared at the castle of Dublin a priest of Oxford named Richard Simon, attended by a boy of about fifteen years of age. The boy was of a peculiarly handsome and interesting appearance; and Simon, who was a total stranger in Ireland, presented him to the lord-deputy, the Earl of Kildare, as Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who, he represented, had fortunately escaped from his dungeon in the Tower of London, and had come to throw himself under the protection of the earl and his friends. Thomas Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, was a zealous Yorkist; his brother was chancellor, and almost all the bishops and officers in the Irish Government had been appointed by Edward IV. or Richard. It is most likely that the lord-deputy and the party were already cognisant of the whole scheme of this agitation; for it is neither likely that Simon the priest should have originated so daring and arduous an enterprise as that of presenting a new claimant for the throne in opposition to the astute and determined Henry Tudor, nor that he should have so particularly singled out Ireland as the opening ground of his operations, and the lord-deputy as his patron and coadjutor. What sufficiently proved this was, that simultaneously the Earl of Lincoln, of whom we have lately made mention, son to the eldest sister of the two late kings, had disappeared from England and gone over to his aunt Margaret, Duchess-Dowager of Burgundy, Henry's most inveterate enemy. This satisfied the king that the plot which showed itself in Ireland was produced in England, and was fomented by the Yorkist party at large. It was soon found that Simon had been diligently instructing the young pretender, whose name was Lambert Simnel, before he produced him in public, in all the arcana of the character he had to support.

The loyalty of the lord-deputy had been already questionable. Henry had sent him a summons to attend in London, but he evaded that by a petition from the spiritual and temporal peers of Ireland, stating strongly the absolute necessity of his presence there. No sooner did Simon present his protégé to Kildare, than that nobleman received him without any apparent reluctance to put faith in his story.

When Henry received this news, he hastened to do what he ought to have done long before. He took the Earl of Warwick out of the Tower, conducted him publicly to St. Paul's, so that all might see him, and all who desired it were allowed to approach him, and converse with him. The nobility and gentry were personally introduced to him, and the king then took him with him to Sheen, where he held his court, and gave familiar access to all those who had seen or known him before. By this politic act he completely satisfied the people of England, who laughed at the impostor in Ireland; but the Irish, on the contrary, declared that Henry's Warwick was the impostor, and theirs the real one. To consult on the best measures for defeating this plot, Henry called a great council at Sheen; but at its breaking up, the public were thrown into still greater surprise and perplexity by the king, who, instead of offering to crown the queen, seized her mother, the queen-dowager, confiscated her property, and consigned her to the custody of the monks of Bermondsey. The reason assigned was, that the queen-dowager, in the last reign, had promised her daughter to Henry, and then put her into the hands of Richard. Such a reason, if really put forward, was a simple absurdity, because since then Elizabeth Woodville had been living at court as the queen-mother, in all public honour. The real cause was presumably connected with the business in hand—the Simnel conspiracy. This is the opinion of Lord Bacon, who, living a hundred years later, nevertheless had access to sources of information not available to the modern student, though his authority may easily be overrated. Speaking of Simon, he says:—"It cannot be but that some great person, that knew particularly and familiarly Edward Plantagenet, had a hand in the business, from whom the priest might take his aim. That which is most probable out of the preceding and subsequent acts is, that it was the queen-dowager from whom this action had the principal source and motion; for certain it is that she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing-chamber had the fortunate conspiracy for the king against Richard III. been hatched, which the king knew, and remembered, perhaps, but too well; and was at this time extremely discontented with the king, thinking her daughter—as the king handled the matter—not advanced but depressed; and none could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage play as she could."

HENRY VII.

But the most formidable and unwearied enemy of Henry VII. was Margaret, the Dowager-Duchess of Burgundy. As the sister of Edward IV. and of Richard, no circumstance could induce her to tolerate Henry Tudor, in her eyes a low-born man, who had thrust the Yorkist line from the throne. To her Lord Lovel had fled, and to her also fled the Earl of Lincoln. To her the Irish party sent emissaries for aid; and she despatched 2,000 veteran German troops, under a brave and experienced general, Martin Schwarz, accompanied by the Earl of Lincoln.