Well supplied with money, notwithstanding the reduction which the Commons had imposed upon his requests, Henry VII., holding two ports upon the coast of Brittany, at length sent to the assistance of the duchess six thousand archers in the spring of 1489; at the same time, a Spanish army was crossing the defile of Roncevaux, which allowed the English, under the orders of Lord Willoughby de Broke, to hold in check the French troops remaining in Brittany; another English corps seconded the attempts of the King of the Romans upon the north, and distinguished itself at the capture of Saint Omer; a treaty of peace was concluded at the end of the year without much glory for either party. The rigour with which the officers of the King of England exacted the subsidies excited an insurrection in the northern counties, and notwithstanding the prompt repression of the disturbances, the new taxes produced only the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds sterling, instead of seventy-five thousand pounds voted by Parliament; Henry VII. took advantage of it to claim, of the Duchess of Brittany, the reimbursement of all the expenditure which he had incurred to help her.
While preparations were being made for renewing the hostilities, and Parliament was voting a tax of the tenth and the fifteenth denier to support the war, one of the allies of King Henry, Maximilian, by negotiating secretly with the counsellors of the Duchess of Brittany, obtained the promise of her hand, and mysteriously married her at Rennes, through his ambassador, the Prince of Orange, in the month of April, 1491; he would have acted more wisely by going in person for the heiress of such large dominions, sought by so many suitors. Scarcely had the Sire d'Albret, a disappointed pretender, who had at one time attempted the abduction of the young princess, been assured of the object of the mission of the Prince of Orange, when he gave warning to the court of France of it, at the same time surrendering to the French, the town of Nantes. In vain did the duchess, who took the title of Queen of the Romans, demand assistance of her new spouse; he was absorbed in a revolt of his Flemish subjects: Brittany again found itself alone, confronting the whole strength of France.
But the views of the court of France towards Brittany had changed. Charles VIII. was now of age, he had shaken off the yoke of his sister, the Dame de Beaujeu; he had released from prison his cousin the Duke of Orleans, and he secretly laid claim to the hand of the Duchess Anne. Betrothed in infancy to the Princess Elizabeth of York, now Queen of England, afterwards designed by his father King Louis XI. to become the husband of Margaret of Austria, "Margot, the gentle damsel," daughter of Margaret of Burgundy, he had seen his little affianced bride, who was then eleven years of age, brought up at his court, and he still publicly announced his intention of wedding her as soon as she should be of age. He carried on negotiations, however, with the lords and ladies who surrounded Anne of Brittany, and when he thought himself assured of a sufficient party among them, he frankly declared his purpose, notwithstanding the engagement with the Princess Margaret, as well as the more sacred bonds which bound the Duchess Anne to Maximilian, the father of the affianced bride of Charles VIII. All these obstacles did not arrest the King of France, and his victorious arms were a powerful argument in his favour. Maximilian did not send assistance to his wife, although the French threatened to besiege Rennes. The question lay, with Anne, between captivity and marriage: she concluded a treaty with Charles VIII., declared void the union which she had contracted with the King of the Romans, and definitively assured Brittany to the crown of France, by wedding, on the 6th of December, 1491, King Charles, in the castle of Langeais, in Touraine. The long struggles of England and France, upon Breton territory, were now forever ended.
In England the anger was great; perhaps Henry VII. had in fact been deceived: he proclaimed it very loudly, declaring that Charles VIII., disturbed the Christian world, and that in future he would no longer hesitate to march to the conquest of France, his legitimate and natural inheritance; at the same time he talked loudly of the alliances which he had concluded, and he obtained fresh subsidies from Parliament, the usual result of the warlike protestations of Henry VII. The raising of troops proceeded rapidly; the names of Crecy, Agincourt, Poictiers, Verneuil, were in all mouths; the noblemen pawned their property, reserving only their horses and swords; they thought themselves certain of acquiring beautiful estates in France; an army of twenty-five thousand foot soldiers and sixteen hundred horses embarked in the month of October, 1492. It was a question of the conquest of the whole of France, an undertaking which could not fail to be long, and winter quarters could be taken up at Calais. Siege was immediately laid to Boulogne, without any attempt at resistance from the French; all the plan of the campaign was known beforehand between the two monarchs, and peace had been concluded before the commencement of the war. Eight days only had been passed before the town, without an assault being made, when letters began to circulate in the camp destroying all hope of the co-operation of the King of Spain or the King of the Romans; Henry VII. thereupon assembled his council, and submitted for its deliberation the grave question of peace with France. All the favourites of the king had been bought over in advance with French gold, and they solemnly decided for the conclusion of peace. The treaties, long since prepared, were signed at the beginning of November; by the public conditions the two kings undertook always to live in peace; mutual understanding was even to subsist for one year after the death of whichever of the sovereigns should survive the other; by the secret treaty, Charles VIII. bound himself to pay by degrees to the King of England, the sum of a hundred and forty-nine thousand pounds sterling, in discharge of all his claims upon the duchy of Brittany, and in payment of the tribute due to King Edward IV. It was thus that Henry VII. knew how to sell war to his subjects and peace to his enemies. Charles VIII. found himself at liberty to proceed with his undertakings against the kingdom of Naples, and the King of England could concentrate all his attention upon his internal affairs, which threatened to give him fresh and grave cares.
A second pretender had in fact arisen for the crown. This time, it was no longer a question, as with Lambert Simnel, of a living prince, easy to be confronted with the imposter; the new rival who had been raised up against King Henry VII. was none other, it was said, than the Duke of York, brother of the unhappy Edward V., escaped from the Tower by a miracle, wandering about the world for seven years past, and now determined to reclaim his crown. He at first presented himself in Ireland, and soon contrived to form a party there, notwithstanding the recent remembrance of Lambert Simnel. But the Earl of Kildare hesitated, and the young pretender turned his steps to France. Soldier and chivalrous as he was, Charles VIII. was not destitute of the cunning natural to the son of Louis XI. It was before the war with England, and he was well pleased to frighten Henry VII.: he received the adventurer, recognized his rights, and admitted him to his court. He was soon surrounded there by a guard of English exiles. While the treaties had remained unsigned at Etaples, Charles VIII. looked with favour upon the pretender; the peace with Henry VII. being once proclaimed, the self-styled Duke of York was compelled to quit the court of France and to take refuge beside the Duchess of Burgundy, the usual resource of the enemies of Henry VII. The latter had demanded that the pretender should be delivered up to him; but Charles VIII. refused this act of treachery as unworthy of his honour. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Burgundy hesitated, or pretended to hesitate, to recognize her nephew. She interrogated him, and caused him to undergo a minute examination upon the secrets of the family. Finally, she solemnly proclaimed that he was really the Duke of York, son of her brother King Edward IV., the White Rose of England; she gave him at her court the state of a prince, furnished him with a guard, and wrote everywhere to her friends in England and on the Continent to announce the miracle which had restored her nephew. The English malcontents, and they were numerous, joyfully embraced this new hope. A delegate was secretly despatched to the court of the Duchess, to verify the pretensions of the prince; he came back as convinced as the Duchess herself. It was really, he said, the Duke of York, the legitimate heir to the crown of England, the amiable and intellectual child whose loss had been mourned. The conspiracy began to spread and to organize.
King Henry meanwhile had not remained inactive; he also had sent secret emissaries to Ireland, who asserted that the pretended Duke of York was no other than Perkin Warbeck, the son of a merchant of Tournay, a converted Jew; that he had much frequented the society of English merchants in Flanders, then had travelled in Europe in the suite of Lady Brompton, wife of an exile. Upon the faith of these instructions Henry demanded of the Archduke Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, to deliver up or, at least, to drive from his states this audacious impostor. Philip lavished assurances of his devotion, promised to refuse all support to the pretender; but the Duchess Margaret was sovereign in her states, and none could compel her to send Perkin Warbeck away. Henry VII. interdicted to his subjects all commerce with Flanders, and he had recourse to deceit to obtain that which diplomacy refused him. Sir Robert Clifford, being bribed, gave up the names of the conspirators; they were all arrested: Sir Simon Montford, Sir Robert Ratcliffe and William Daubeney were immediately executed. Among those who received their pardon "few men survived long," says the chronicler; Lord Fitzwalter, amongst others, having attempted to escape from his prison at Calais, was beheaded without any more ado. One greater than he was shortly going to pay with his life for the same suspicions.
Sir William Stanley, brother of the Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby, who had placed Henry VII. upon the throne, and who had himself saved the life of the king at Bosworth, was accused by Clifford of having been concerned in the conspiracy. The king refused at first to believe it; but when he interrogated his chamberlain, Sir William was embarrassed in his answers, and ended by confessing to a certain degree of complicity. The judges of Westminster held the crime to be sufficient and Stanley was condemned to death. All reckoned upon his pardon; the king's aversion to blood was remembered, as well as the services which the family of the guilty man had rendered him; but the large fortune of Sir William was forgotten and he was executed and all his property was confiscated. Terror began to seize the conspirators; they distrusted each other. The position of Warbeck became difficult in Flanders; the merchants complained of the cessation of the English commerce. The adventurer resolved to land unexpectedly in England, hoping that an insurrection in his favour would take place. He arrived near Deal on the 3rd of July, 1495, while the king had gone to pay a visit to his mother, in Lancashire. He was accompanied by about five hundred men, all English exiles and of desperate courage; but the population rose against the impostor, and not for him: the peasants of Kent fought with their sticks and pitchforks. The assailants were killed or made prisoners; a small number succeeded in reaching the vessels: Warbeck was at the head of these latter. The captives were all conducted to London, their hands tied together, like a flock of sheep, and they were executed in a mass in the same manner. Henry VII. lavished praises and promises upon the brave countrymen who had repulsed the enemy; he, at the same time, concluded a treaty with the Flemings, promising to restore the freedom of commerce, if the Duke Philip would undertake to prevent the Duchess Margaret from receiving Warbeck and his partisans. The adventurer was therefore compelled to quit Flanders; he presented himself in Ireland, where he was coldly received; it was to Scotland that he went to seek refuge. The king of Scotland was discontented with Henry VII.; he willingly received the pretender.
Notwithstanding numerous treaties and projects of alliance so many times concluded between the courts of England and Scotland, Henry VII. had always been concerned in the conspiracies against James III. The brother of the King of Scotland, Albany, was dead; but the barons had not become subdued; the malcontents had rallied around the young Duke of Rothsay, the eldest son of the monarch, and this unnatural war, after alternations of successes and reverses, had been terminated, on the 18th of June, 1488, by a sanguinary combat at Little Canglar, a wild heath about one league from Stirling. The king had been carried off by his horse; he had fallen in a swoon. Some peasants had lifted him up without knowing him; but amidst the tumult a man approached the unhappy prince, and leaning towards him as though to succor him, he struck him two blows with a dagger. James III. was only thirty-five years of age, and his death excited in the heart of the son, who had fought and almost dethroned him, a remorse which ended only with his life. The example of revolt which he had set bore, moreover, its fruits; he lived in the midst of conspiracies and internal struggles, finding at times in his embarrassments traces of the influence of Henry VII., more often being ignorant of his complicity, but convinced, notwithstanding, that the King of England was a perfidious ally with whom it was necessary to arrive at an open rupture. Perkin Warbeck furnished him with the opportunity for it. James did not look very closely into the truth of his story; he was duped, or feigned to be so, and, shortly after the arrival of his "good cousin of York" in Scotland, amidst tournaments and rejoicings which he lavished, the King of Scotland married the adventurer, Perkin Warbeck, to Lady Catharine Gordon, the charming daughter of the Earl of Huntley, and through her mother, a near relative of the royal house.