Duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., had escaped from the Tower, where his unfortunate brother had perished by the orders of Richard III. In 1491, a young man, nineteen years of age, of interesting appearance and noble manners, landed in the Cove of Cork. He took the name of Richard IV., and as such was warmly received by the citizens of Cork, and many of the English settlers in Ireland, who were old Yorkists, acknowledged him as their sovereign. Here he was induced to accept a pressing invitation from the French king, who gave him a courteous reception, and appointed a body-guard to wait upon him. A number of English exiles went to Paris and bound themselves to his service. On the conclusion of hostilities with England, Charles ordered the young man to quit his territories, and he accordingly withdrew to the court of the Duchess of Burgundy. This princess, who hated King Henry and all his race with a most enduring and implacable hatred, after some little hesitation, embraced her guest as her dear nephew, and gave him the poetical title of “the White Rose of England." This was soon known at Henry's court, and while the Yorkist emissaries felt no doubt as to his birth and rights, those of the king stated, that he was one Perkin Warbeck, the son of a converted Jew, a wealthy merchant of Tournay.

Upon this Henry prepared for a war, not of arms but of policy. He bribed Sir Robert Clifford to betray the names of the English gentry who had entered into Warbeck's schemes, and a number of them were arrested and brought to London. Sir Simon Mountford, Robert Ratcliffe, and William Daubeney, were immediately executed; the rest were pardoned. Not long after this, Sir William Stanley, brother to that Lord Stanley who had placed the crown on Richmond's head after the battle of Bosworth, and who had himself saved the king's life when it was endangered by Richard's furious charge, was put to death as a traitor. There may have been political reasons for his execution; but it was alleged that the king had cast a covetous eye upon his immense wealth.

In July 1496, Warbeck resolved to invade England, and while the king was on a visit to his mother in

Lancashire, a few hundred desperate men were landed at Deal. They were quickly driven back to the seashore; one hundred and sixty-nine were taken prisoners; the rest with Perkin returned to Flanders. All the captives were executed, and their bodies gibbeted along the eastern and southern coasts.

4. From Flanders Warbeck now proceeded to Ireland, where he was coldly received; thence he crossed over to Scotland, where he was joyfully welcomed by the court. James IV. always addressed him as his cousin, and married him to Lady Catherine Gordon, the Earl of Huntly's beautiful daughter, who was nearly related on the mother's side to the royal house of Stuart. Whether the Scottish monarch believed Perkin to be of royal blood or knew him to be an impostor, must ever remain a matter of conjecture; but it is certain that he and his people had long distrusted Henry, and were eager for a cause of quarrel with him. An insurrection arose in England from the aid given by the King of Scots to Perkin Warbeck. The men of Cornwall, holding that they were overtaxed to meet the invaders, rose in insurrection and marched to Devonshire, to the number of 16,000. From that they went through Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Surrey, into Kent, and encamped at Blackheath. Though without cavalry, artillery, or trained officers, the insurgents fought bravely against the king's forces, until 2000 of them were slain, June and 1500 were taken prisoners. Of the latter, 1497. Lord Audley was beheaded on Tower Hill; and Flammock an attorney, with Joseph a blacksmith, were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The rest were all pardoned.

After another incursion across the borders, which was retaliated by the English army under the Earl of Surrey, James listened to Henry's terms of peace, and consented to dismiss Perkin. The adventurer once more endeavoured to raise the Irish, but failing in this he steered for Cornwall, and landed in Whitsand Bay with a small body of followers. Here he soon found himself at the head of a host eager to revenge the loss of their friends and relations at Blackheath; and assuming the title of Richard IV., he appeared before Exeter with an irregular force of about

10,000 men. The failure of their attack upon this city so disheartened many of the rebels that they began to return home; while the remainder marched towards Taunton. Here their progress was stopped by the royal army. Perkin lost heart, and fled during the night: in the morning, the rebels submitted to the king's mercy. The ringleaders were hanged, and the rest contemptuously dismissed. Immediate pursuit was made after the fugitive, who had succeeded in reaching the sanctuary of Beaulieu in the New Forest. Finding himself without help or hope, he surrendered to the king, and after being paraded through the streets of London, was permitted to live at court in apparent liberty, although in reality he was strictly watched. Six or seven months afterwards he contrived to escape, but was brought back, and after being set in the stocks at Westminster and Cheapside, was sent A. D. to the Tower. In the succeeding year an attempt 1498. S was made to restore him to liberty; but its failure cost him his life. He was arraigned for treason, con23d Nov. victed and executed at Tyburn; and on the fol1499. lowing day the Earl of Warwick was beheaded on Tower Hill for his alleged participation in Perkin's schemes. Warwick was in his 29th year when he died, but had been a state prisoner from his childhood. The people long believed Warbeck to have been really the Duke of York, and in this they were confirmed by the contradictions and reservations in the adventurer's dying confession. In 1674, as some workmen were making repairs in the Tower, they found the skeletons of two children buried at the foot of the stairs leading from the king's apartments to the chapel. They are supposed to have been the remains of Edward V. and his brother. If this be correct Perkin Warbeck was an impostor; but his whole history is interwoven with doubts, and the weight of evidence is by some thought to incline to the other side. The innocent Warwick was sacrificed under the pretence that his life was an obstacle to the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Princess Catherine of Aragon, whose hand was said to have been refused by her father so long as there existed such a near heir to the crown of England.

5. Being now freed from every rival to his throne, Henry sought to strengthen his position by great alliances. In 1501, Prince Arthur was married to Catherine of Aragon, but did not survive his union more than six months. Ferdinand, the father of the young widow, immediately proposed that she should be united to her brother-in-law, Henry, now heir-apparent to the English throne. The obstacles of the canons of the Romish church were overcome; and in 1503, the young prince was contracted to Catherine, but the marriage was delayed on various pretences for nearly six years.

Queen Elizabeth of York having died not long after her son Arthur, Henry began to look through Europe for another wife. He first cast his eyes on the widow of the late King of Naples, whose husband had bequeathed her immense wealth; but on finding that the new king would not give up the treasures, he sought another widow, Margaret of Savoy, whose possessions were at her own disposal. An extraordinary incident favoured his views. In January 1506, the Archduke Philip and his wife Joanna, now queen of Castile by her mother's death, on their way from Flanders to Spain, were driven into Weymouth harbour. Henry invited them to his court, where he entertained them magnificently, but would not allow the archduke, who was Margaret's brother, to depart, until he had agreed to the marriage, and fixed her portion at 300,000 crowns. A treaty of commerce was also concluded wholly in favour of the English; and Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, one of the nephews of the Duchess of Burgundy, and at that time in the Low Countries, was surrendered to Henry's vengeance.

Before the negotiations could be finished for the marriage of Margaret of Savoy, Philip died in Spain, leaving a widow whose alliance seemed much more desirable to the

English king. It was, however, rumoured that she was insane; but this did not change Henry's cupidity: he neglected Margaret, and proposed for Joanna. Her father promised him her hand as soon as she should recover her reason; but that time never arrived, and Henry, disappointed in all his matrimonial speculations, was obliged

to have recourse to other modes of gratifying his avaricious propensities.

The king's health had long been declining, and his sufferings made him think seriously of the world to come. In the spring of 1507, he distributed alms among the poor, and discharged all prisoners in London confined for debts under forty shillings. In the beginning of 1509, he made his will, in which he enjoined his successor to repair the injuries he himself had committed, and make restitution to the victims he had plundered. He died at his new palace of Richmond on the 21st of April in the same year, and was buried in the magnificent chapel of Westminster Abbey, which bears his name. He had reached the fifty-third year of his age, and the twenty-fourth of his reign.

6. Although Henry VII. was an able soldier, yet, either from natural disposition or from policy, his measures were in general pacific, and he lived on friendly terms with the neighbouring princes. Under his government, law and justice again made their appearance, after an absence of thirty years during the civil wars. He protected and encouraged commerce, manufactures, and navigation, which had languished during the same period, and from the effect of a long series of hostilities with France. Imitating the example of Edward III., he invited over Flemish workmen, who taught the people to spin wool; and by a special treaty he secured to his subjects the exclusive commerce of Iceland, and opened to them that of the Baltic on condition that they should pay certain tolls to the King of Denmark on passing through the Sound. He also desired to have his name connected with the great maritime movement that had been begun by Portugal; and in 1498, excited by the news brought home by Columbus, whose brother had visited the English court, he sent out Sebastian Cabot from Bristol to seek for new countries beyond the western main. The discoverer touched at the island of Newfoundland, and coasted along the shores of Florida; thus to England belongs the honour of first exploring the mainland of America. Although these voyages were not at that time followed by any settlement in the New World, they began to inspire the nation with a taste for foreign