York caused him to treat his wife with coldness and neglect. ac-cess-ion rid-ding mar-ri-age sym-path-ies 1 The following table will show that Henry VII. was descended from John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, the half-brother of Henry IV. 54.-PERKIN WARBECK'S PLOT. 1. An Oxford priest, named Richard Simon, brought forward a clever youth of fifteen, named Lambert Simnel, and, taking advantage of a rumour that the young Duke of York, second son of Edward IV., had escaped from the Tower, caused Simnel to proclaim himself the Prince. In Ireland and France the plot received a short-lived, though fervent support; but it was quickly exposed. 2. The King was not yet safe from the conspiracies of his enemies, for, five years after Lambert Simnel's defeat, another impostor appeared. He personated the young Duke of York, for the rumour was still afloat that he had escaped from the Tower when his elder brother was killed. 3. Perkin Warbeck was a native of Tournay, and well suited for the character he assumed, for he was handsome, graceful, clever, and of courtly manners. Like Lambert Simnel, he chose Ireland as the place where he should first declare himself, and on landing at Cork he speedily gained followers. At this time there were threatenings of war between France and England, and Charles VIII. of France, being glad of any prospect of doing harm to Henry, invited Warbeck over to his court. He treated him HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. with all the honour due to a prince, giving him magnificent lodgings, a guard for his person, and providing him with a pension. Peace, however, was soon made, and Henry demanded that Warbeck should be given up to him; but Charles would consent only to dismiss him. 4. On leaving France, Warbeck went to the Duchess of Burgundy. She welcomed him as her nephew, and the belief in him rapidly spread in England. Tyrrel and Dighton had confessed to the murder of both the young Princes; but as the bodies were thought to have been removed by Richard's orders from the place where they had been buried, the King could not convince the people of Warbeck's imposture by showing the body of the young Prince. Henry was cautious in his way of working, and by means of spies he got information as to the supporters of Warbeck in England, and had them arrested and executed. 5. This struck terror into the conspirators, and Perkin found his cause losing ground. He therefore attempted a landing in Ireland, but, meeting with little success, went to Scotland, where he was well received by James IV., and married to Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly. Besides this, James actually made an inroad into England on Warbeck's behalf; but this proving unsuccessful, Perkin left Scotland, and tried his success in Cornwall, where he gained 3,000 followers, and for the first time took the title of Richard IV. His followers soon numbered 7,000, but on the approach of the King's army, Warbeck retreated, and the Cornishmen submitted, some being executed and others pardoned. On promise of pardon, Warbeck gave himself into the King's hands, was taken to London, and imprisoned in the Tower; but being discovered in a plot with the Earl of Warwick, his fellow-prisoner, he was hanged at Tyburn. A few days afterwards the Earl of Warwick suffered the same fate. 6. This cruel and violent act was excused by Henry, on the ground that Ferdinand of Arragon would not give his daughter in marriage to Henry's son while a descendant of the House of York still lived. Henry by this means rid himself of the last representative of the House of York, and so secured his own position on the throne; but the execution of the Earl of Warwick has left a stain on his name which will never be forgotten. 7. The marriage thus arranged did not prove prosperous, for the King's son, Arthur, died soon after his marriage with Catherine of Arragon.1 But Henry, being anxious not to lose her dowry, caused her to be promised to his second son, Henry, now a boy of eleven. He also married his daughter Margaret to James of Scotland. LADY IN THE TIME 8. Henry was now at the height of his prosperity, and during the remaining years of his reign few events of importance occurred. His aim was to make himself absolute, and in this respect he followed the policy of Edward IV. Parliament became completely dependent on him, and so little did he consult it, that during the last thirteen years of his reign he had no Parliament at all. The Crown was now more powerful than it had been for a long time. 9. The old nobility had almost died out in the Wars of the Roses, and Henry curbed the power of those nobles who remained, by forbidding them to keep a large number of retainers. Henry's ruling He passion was avarice, and when he died he left a treasure of nearly two millions to his successor. died of consumption at his palace of Richmond, after a reign of twenty-three years, in the fifty-second year of his age. 1 Arragon, a province in the north-east of Spain, watered by the river Ebro. 55,-THE RENASCENCE. 1. With the reign of Henry VII. modern history begins. Feudalism was at an end, for the invention of gunpowder entirely changed the character of warfare, and the heavily-armed and mounted knight was no longer a necessary part of war. Three great inventions-printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's compass-totally altered the face of things, and other great events, which happened about the same time, brought about such changes in Europe, and so stirred the minds of men, that it seemed like a great awakening after the long darkness of the Middle Ages. We feel that the old state of things had passed away, never to return. 2. One of these great events was the discovery of the New World, and we can imagine what a quickening effect that must have had on the minds of men. Columbus, a Genoese in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, first discovered the islands of America, and called them the West Indies; but Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian, led an expedition |