But after a little while Richmond wrote to his friends in England, that, if they would be ready to help him when he came, he would bring with him from abroad money and men, and then England might get rid of the wicked King Richard of the White Rose, and take him instead for their king.
The best gentlemen in England immediately got ready to receive Richmond; all the relations of the persons Richard had put to death were glad to join with him to punish that bad man. The people in Wales were delighted to think of having one belonging to their ancient princes to be their king, and, not long after Richmond had landed at Milford Haven, he found several thousand men ready to follow him.
Richard, who was brave, although he was cruel, got ready an army also to fight Richmond, and he met him at a place called Bosworth, in Leicestershire, where they fought a great battle.
I have read that King Richard, when he was lying in his tent the night before the battle, could not help thinking of all the cruel things he had done. Besides those he had killed in battle, he remembered the young prince Edward of Lancaster, whom he stabbed at Tewkesbury, and poor Henry the Sixth, whom he had murdered in prison, and his own brother Clarence, whom he had caused to be killed. Then he began to think of Lord Hastings, and all his friends, six or seven, I think, whom he had beheaded, and his little nephews, who were smothered in the Tower, and his cousin Buckingham, and, last of all, his wife, Queen Anne, whom he had used so ill that she died.
And so when he got up in the morning he was tired and unhappy, and did not fight so well as he might have done.
However that might be, he was killed in the battle of Bosworth Field. His crown was found upon the field of battle, and Lord Stanley put it upon the Earl of Richmond’s head, upon which the whole army shouted “Long live King Henry the Seventh!” and so from that day the British prince, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and heir of Lancaster, was king of England.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
HENRY VII.—1485 to 1509.
How Henry the Seventh united the parties of the White and the Red Roses; how Lambert Simnel, and afterwards Perkin Warbeck, rebelled against him, but were subdued; how the people began to improve themselves in learning; how America was discovered; how King Henry did many useful things, but was not beloved by the people.
When the Earl of Richmond was made king, and was called Henry the Seventh, many persons began to be afraid that the wars of the Roses would begin again. But Henry was a wise man, and he had made friends of the party of York, by promising to marry his cousin Elizabeth, the sister of the little princes who were smothered in the Tower. So, as soon as he was crowned himself, and the people had owned him for their king, he married Elizabeth; and as Henry was King of the Red Rose party, and she was Queen of the White Rose party, the people agreed better than they had done for more than thirty years, and England began to be quiet and happy.
However, there were two disturbances in the beginning of Henry’s reign that I must tell you of. There was a very good-looking young man, called Lambert Simnel, that some people thought was very like the Earl of Warwick, a son of that Duke of Clarence who was killed in the Tower; and some persons, who wished to annoy Henry the Seventh, persuaded Lambert to say he was Warwick, and that he had run away from the Tower, and had hidden himself till after his uncle Richard’s death; but that now, as Richard and his little cousins were all dead, he had a right to be king. Some few Englishmen joined him, and a good many Irish. But in a battle at Stoke, in the North of England, they were all driven away, and Lambert was taken prisoner.