Henry Tudor is known to history as Henry VII., and caused some adverse criticism by delaying his nuptials with the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.
A pleasing practical joke at this time came near plunging the country into a bloody war. A rumor having gone forth that the Earl of Warwick had escaped from the Tower, a priest named Simon instructed a good-looking young man-about-town named Lambert Simnel to play the part, landed him in Ireland, and proceeded to call for troops. Strange to say, in those days almost any pretender with courage stood a good chance of winning renown or a hospitable grave in this way. But Lambert was not made of the material generally used in the construction of great men, and, though he secured quite an army, and the aid of the Earl of Lincoln and many veteran troops, the first battle closed the comedy, and the bogus sovereign, too contemptible even to occupy the valuable time of the hangman, became a scullion in the royal kitchen, while Simon was imprisoned.
[Illustration: SIMON, A PRIEST OF OXFORD, TAKES LAMBERT THE PRETENDER TO
IRELAND.]
For five years things were again dull, but at the end of that period an understudy for Richard, Duke of York, arose and made pretensions. His name was Perkin Warbeck, and though the son of a Flemish merchant, he was a great favorite at social functions and straw rides. He went to Ireland, where anything in the way of a riot was even then hailed with delight, and soon the York family and others who cursed the reigning dynasty flocked to his standard.
France endorsed him temporarily until Charles became reconciled to Henry, and then he dropped Perkin like a heated potato. Perk, however, had been well entertained in Paris as the coming English king, and while there was not permitted to pay for a thing. He now visited the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., and made a hit at once. She gave him the title of The White Rose of England (1493), and he was pleased to find himself so popular when he might have been measuring molasses in the obscurity of his father's store.
Henry now felt quite mortified that he could not produce the evidence of the murder of the two sons of Edward IV., so as to settle this gay young pretender; but he did not succeed in finding the remains, though they were afterwards discovered under the staircase of the White Tower, and buried in Westminster Abbey, where the floor is now paved with epitaphs, and where economy and grief are better combined, perhaps, than elsewhere in the world, the floor and tombstone being happily united, thus, as it were, killing two birds with one stone.
But how sad it is to-day to contemplate the situation occupied by Henry, forced thus to rummage the kingdom for the dust of two murdered princes, that he might, by unearthing a most wicked crime, prevent the success of a young pretender, and yet fearing to do so lest he might call the attention of the police to the royal record of homicide, regicide, fratricide, and germicide!
Most cruel of all this sad history, perhaps, was the execution of Stanley, the king's best friend in the past, who had saved his life in battle and crowned him at Bosworth. In an unguarded moment he had said that were he sure the young man was as he claimed, King Edward's son, he—Stanley—would not fight against him. For this purely unpartisan remark he yielded up his noble life in 1495.
Warbeck for some time went about trying to organize cheap insurrections, with poor success until he reached Scotland, where James IV. endorsed him, and told him to have his luggage sent up to the castle. James also presented his sister Catherine as a spouse to the giddy young scion of the Flemish calico counter. James also assisted Perkin, his new brother-in-law, in an invasion of England, which failed, after which the pretender gave himself up. He was hanged amid great applause at Tyburn, and the Earl of Warwick, with whom he had planned to escape, was beheaded at Tower Hill. Thus, in 1499, perished the last of the Plantagenets of the male kind.
Henry hated war, not because of its cruelty and horrors, but because it was expensive. He was one of the most parsimonious of kings, and often averted war in order to prevent the wear and tear on the cannon. He managed to acquire two million pounds sterling from the reluctant tax-payer, yet no monarch ever received such a universal consent when he desired to pass away. If any regret was felt anywhere, it was so deftly concealed that his death, to all appearance, gave general and complete satisfaction.