Such when as Archimago him did view,He weened well to work some uncouth wile;Eftsoon untwisting: his deceitful clew,He 'gan to weave a web of cunning guile.SPENSER.
Such when as Archimago him did view,He weened well to work some uncouth wile;Eftsoon untwisting: his deceitful clew,He 'gan to weave a web of cunning guile.SPENSER.
Such when as Archimago him did view,He weened well to work some uncouth wile;Eftsoon untwisting: his deceitful clew,He 'gan to weave a web of cunning guile.
SPENSER.
The birth of Arthur, prince of Wales, which took place in the month of September of this same year, served to confirm Henry Tudor on the throne, and almost to obliterate the memory of a second and resisting party in the kingdom. That party indeed was overthrown, its chiefs scattered, its hopes few. Most of the principal Yorkists had taken refuge in the court of the duchess of Burgundy; the earl of Lincoln only ventured to remain, preserving the appearance of the greatest privacy, while his secret hours were entirely occupied by planning a rising in the kingdom, whose success would establish his cousin Richard duke of York, the fugitive Perkin Warbeck, on the throne. The chief obstacle that presented itself was the difficulty of exciting the English to any act of rebellion against the king, without bringing forward the young prince as the principal actor on the scene. The confirmed friendship between the queen and Lady Brampton had produced a greater degree of intercourse between the former and the earl; but their joint counsels had yet failed to originate a plan of action; when chance, or rather the unforeseen results of former events, determined their course of action, and brought to a crisis sooner than they expected the wavering purposes of each.
Richard Simon had quitted Winchester to fulfil his duties as priest in the town of Oxford. No man was better fitted than Simon to act a prominent part in a state-plot. He was brave; but the priestly garb having wrested the sword from his hand, circumstances had converted that active courage, which might have signalized him in the field, to a spirit of restless intrigue; to boldness in encountering difficulties, and address in surmounting them. To form plans, to concoct the various parts of a scheme, wedging one into the other; to raise a whirlwind around him, and to know, or to fancy that he knew, the direction the ravager would take, and what would be destroyed and what saved in its course, had been from youth the atmosphere in which he lived. Now absent from the queen, he was yet on the alert to further her views, and he looked forward to the exaltation of her son to the throne as the foundation-stone of his own fortunes. In what way could this be brought about? After infinite deliberation with himself, Simon conceived the idea of bringing forward an impostor, who, taking the name of Richard of York, whose survival, though unattested, was a current belief in the kingdom, might rouse England in his cause. If unsuccessful, the safety of the rightful prince was not endangered; if triumphant, this counterfeit would doff his mark at once, and the real York come forward in his place.
In the true spirit of intrigue, in which Simon was an adept, he resolved to mature his plans and commence his operations before he communicated them to any. He looked round for a likely actor for his new part, and chance brought him in contact with Lambert Simnel, a baker's son at Oxford. There was something in his fair complexion and regular soft features that was akin to York; his figure was slight, his untaught manners replete with innate grace; he was clever; and his beauty having made him a sort of favourite, he had grown indolent and assuming. His father died about this time, and he was left a penniless orphan. Simon came forward to protect him, and cautiously to point out the road to fortune without labour. The youth proved an apt scholar. To hear speak of princes, crowns, and kingdoms as objects in which he was to have an interest and a share, dazzled his young eyes. He learnt speedily every lesson the priest taught him, and adopted so readily the new language inculcated, that Simon became more and more enamoured of his scheme, and sanguine as to its results. The next care of Simon was to confirm, in the partizans of the House of York, the suspicion they already entertained of the existence of its noblest scion; he despatched anonymous letters to the chief nobles, and it became whispered through the country, though none knew the origin of the tale, that the surviving son of Edward the Fourth was about to appear to claim the crown. The peaceful sighed to think that the White and Red Roses would again be watered by the best blood of England. The warlike and ambitious, the partizans of York, who had languished in obscurity, walked more erect; they regarded their disused armour with complacency, for war and tumult was then the favourite pastime of high-born men.
It was at this period that, through the intervention of Lady Brampton, Sir Thomas Broughton, a most zealous Yorkist and chief friend of Lord Lovel, was introduced to the dowager queen's presence, then residing in London. He came full of important intelligence. He had been roused from his usual repose by one of Simon's anonymous letters, which hinted at the existence of the duke of York, and counselled a drawing together of such forces as would be willing to support him; Lord Lovel was with him, and at the name of Richard at once prepared for action. He was busied in raising adherents in the south, sending Sir Thomas to London, that he might there receive the commands of the prince's mother. Scarcely had he entered the metropolis, when in one of its narrowest alleys he was accosted by Richard Simon, who had earnestly besought him to obtain an audience for Simon himself from the queen; acknowledging that he was the author of the reports and commotions, and that he had important secrets to disclose.
All this inspired the queen with the deepest disquietude. She readily arranged with Sir Thomas the desired interview, which, at Simon's request, was to take place that very night, and agreed that he should enter the palace by a private door. Lady Brampton giving him admittance. Broughton departed; and Elizabeth, disturbed and agitated, counted the hours impatiently which must intervene before the riddle was explained.
Even this interval was full of wonder. A report was circulated, which soon reached the palace, that the earl of Warwick, in endeavouring to escape from the Tower in a boat, had fallen into the river, and was drowned before assistance could be afforded. Such was the current tale; but many suspected that the king was privy to a more guilty termination of his unhappy prisoner, of whose death none entertained a doubt. This circumstance added to the queen's impatience—life was bound up in the event of the next few hours.
The time arrived—all was quiet in the palace (the queen inhabited Tower Royal); and the royal dowager and her friend prepared for their visitor. At the signal given, the door was opened; but Simon came not alone; the earl of Lincoln, Lord Lovel, Sir Thomas Broughton, and an unknown youth—it was Edmund Plantagenet—entered. The tale of the imposture of Lambert Simnel was disclosed, and with it a change of plan, the result of the death of Warwick. Simnel's age and appearance accorded better with this prince than with his younger cousin. It were easy to spread abroad that the report of his death was a fiction contrived by the king; that he had escaped, in fact, and was in arms. If a more sinister fate had befallen him, guilt would impose silence on his murderer; if the attempt failed, no evil would occur; if successful, he would give instant place to the superior claims of the duke of York.
Lincoln unfolded these schemes with sagacity and deliberation, and the queen eagerly adopted his ideas as he disclosed them. It was also the earl's suggestion that Simnel should first appear in Ireland. The duke of Clarence had been lieutenant there, and was much beloved throughout the island. Through neglect and forgetfulness all the counsellors and officers appointed by Clarence had been unremoved by the new government, and might easily be induced to favour his persecuted son. The duchess of Burgundy was also to be applied to; and counsel was held as to who should be informed of the truth—who deceived in this hazardous attempt. Night wore away, while still the conspirators were in deliberation; they separated at last, each full of hope—each teeming with gallant resolution. Henceforth the false smile or ill-concealed frown of their enemy was indifferent to them; their good swords were their sure allies; the very victory gained by Henry at Bosworth raised their expectations; one other battle might give them again all that then they lost.
Within these ten days take a monastery;A most strict house; a house where none may whisper,Where no more light is known but what may make youBelieve there is a day; where no hope dwells,Nor comfort but in tears.BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Within these ten days take a monastery;A most strict house; a house where none may whisper,Where no more light is known but what may make youBelieve there is a day; where no hope dwells,Nor comfort but in tears.BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Within these ten days take a monastery;A most strict house; a house where none may whisper,Where no more light is known but what may make youBelieve there is a day; where no hope dwells,Nor comfort but in tears.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
With the consciousness of this plot weighing on her mind, Elizabeth Woodville continued her usual routine of life, and made a part of the court of Henry the Seventh. She had long been accustomed to pass from one evil to the other, and to find that when one cause for unhappiness died away, it gave instant place to another. She felt, with all the poignancy of a mother's disappointed pride, the situation of her daughter. Neglect was the lightest term that could be applied to the systematized and cold-hearted tyranny of Henry towards his wife. For not only he treated her like an unfavoured child, whose duty it was to obey without a murmur, and to endeavour to please, though sure of being repulsed. At the same time that he refused to raise her above this state of degradation, he reproached her with the faults of maturity, and stung her womanly feelings with studied barbarity. He taunted her with her attachment, to her family and its partizans; spoke with triumph of its overthrow; and detailed with malignant pleasure every severe enactment passed by himself against the vanquished Yorkists. Then, again, he accused her of participating in her parent's intrigues; and though proud of the son she had given him, as the heir of his crown, he divided, as much as possible, the infant from the mother, under the avowed though ridiculous pretence of preventing her from inculcating principles of rebellion towards his liege and father.
This last blow sunk deep. She had hitherto borne his harshness meekly, sustained by the hope of overcoming his flinty nature by softness and yielding. She had anticipated that the fresh enmity conceived against her on the event of Lord Lovel's rebellion would be entirely allayed by her pretty Arthur, whose birth was solemnized by many rejoicings. But when she found this last hope fail, every expectation of good died away with it. Among other acts of duty, she had for a long time pursued a system of self-denial, deeming it a breach of duty to complain of her husband, even to her mother. But this mother, acquainted with the secrets of the human heart, and desirous of detaching her entirely from her husband, exerted all the influence that one experienced and firm can exercise over the young and vacillating: she brought her to lament her situation, and to complain of each fresh token of the king's disregard. The barrier of self-restraint once broken through, the sympathy and remonstrances of her parent emboldened her to such a change of conduct towards Henry, as at first excited his surprise, then his contempt. The many rumours afloat concerning the existence of the duke of York served also to rouse his angry mood. If at first he appeared somewhat complaisant towards his mother-in-law, it was from an endeavour to put her off her guard, and to attract or surprise her confidence on the point which lay nearest his heart; but when he found that his attacks were vain, his undisguised arrogance and her ill-concealed resentment produced scenes, disgraceful in themselves, and agonizing to the wife and daughter who was their witness.
At this moment, when suspicion was abroad—the Lancastrians fearful, the Yorkists erect with renewed hopes—like the bursting of a thunderstorm came the intelligence of the appearance of the earl of Warwick in Dublin, his enthusiastic reception there, the rising of the people in his favour, and the menaces held out by him of his intention to wrench the sceptre of England from the hand of him who held it.
Henry alone heard these momentous tidings with contempt. The earl of Kildare, lord-lieutenant of the kingdom, had received the pretender with princely honours; yet the very circumstance of a false son of Clarence being supported by the Yorkists was the occasion of satisfaction to him; his only fear arose from the probable mystery covered by these designs. He was angry at the disloyalty manifested; but it was in a distant province, and so came not home to him. There appeared no falling off, no disturbance among his English subjects. Still caution and policy were the weapons he best loved to wield; and he despatched several spies to Ireland, to endeavour to fathom the extent and nature of the rebellion. The chief among them was his own secretary, Frion, a Frenchman—a crafty and experienced implement. He succeeded in bringing back irrefragable proof that the dowager queen mingled deeply in the plot.
Henry hated Elizabeth Woodville. He considered that it was principally through her restless scheming that he had been forced to marry the portionless (her detested claim to his crown her only dower) daughter of York, instead of forming an union with a foreign princess; perhaps Mary of Burgundy, or Anne of Britanny, either of whom would have brought gold to his coffers, or extensive domains to his empire. He hated her, because he deeply suspected that she was privy to the existence of a formidable rival to his state. Heknewthat the young duke of York had not died in the Tower. In every way she was his enemy; besides that linked to her ruin was the sweet idea of confiscation, one ever entertained with delight by the money-loving king.
He assembled a council in his palace at Shene, which stood near where Richmond now stands. The chiefs of the English nobility were his counsellors. The duke of Buckingham, son of him who first favoured, and then rose against Richard the Third. The lords Dawbeny and Broke, who had been raised to the peerage for their services in the same cause. Lord and Sir William Stanley, men to whom Henry principally owed his crown. Others there were of high rank and note; but the king paid most attention to two priests: John Morton, bishop of Ely, and Richard Fox, bishop of Exeter, were his private advisors and friends, as well as public counsellors. Morton had watched over his interests while in exile; he first had excited the duke of Buckingham to revolt, and hatched the plot which placed Richmond on the throne.
The council held was long and solemn, and the results brought about more by insinuation than open argument, were different from those expected by most of the persons present. First it was resolved that a general pardon should be proclaimed to the insurgents. No exceptions were to be made; those persons then in the very act of setting up his adversary were included; for as, by the second decree, that the real earl of Warwick should be shown publicly in London, the deception would become manifest; if indeed they were deceived, it was thought more politic to reclaim them by clemency, than by severe measures to drive them to despair.
The third and last enactment was levelled against the queen dowager. Many of the council were astonished to hear it proposed, that she should forfeit all her goods and lands, and be confined for life in a convent, for having consented to the marriage of her daughter and Richard the Third, while the ready acquiescence of the king and his chief advisers made them perceive that this measure was no new resolve. These three decrees passed, the council separated, and Henry returned to Westminster, accompanied by Sir William Stanley. To him he spoke openly of the treason of the queen: he even ventured to say, that he was sure that some mystery lurked beneath; he commissioned Stanley, therefore, to notify the order of council to her majesty; but at the same time to show her, that disclosure, and reliance on the king, would obtain her pardon. Sir William Stanley was a courtier in the best sense of the term; a man of gentle manners; desirous of doing right, easily excited to compassion, but ambitious and timid; one in truth than whom none could be more dangerous; for his desire to please those immediately before him, led him to assume every appearance of sincerity, and perpetually to sacrifice the absent to the present.
Elizabeth heard, with utter dismay, the sentence passed against her;—courage was restored only when she found that her freedom could be purchased by the confession of her son's existence, and place of abode. She repelled Stanley's solicitations with disdain; answered his entreaties with an appeal to his own feelings, of how far, if such a secret existed, it were possible that she, a mother, should intrust it to the false and cruel king. Stanley speedily found his whole battery of persuasion exhausted; he withdrew in some wonder as to what the real state of things might be, and full of the deepest compassion. She had indeed scarcely veiled the truth to him; for, calling to mind the fate of the wretched Margaret of Anjou, she asked him, whether, like her, she should expose the young orphan York to the fate of the Lancastrian Prince Edward. But Stanley shrunk from being privy to such disclosures, and hastily withdrew.
Henry had not exhausted all his hopes: glad as he was to wreak his vengeance on the queen, and to secure her possessions to himself, he was not so blind as not to see that the knowledge of her secret were a far greater prize. His next implement was her eldest son, the marquess of Dorset. Lord Dorset had been so active in his opposition to Richard the Third, and had done such good service to his adversary, that Henry overlooked his near kindred to the queen dowager, regarding him rather as the representative of his father. Sir John Gray, who had fallen in the cause of Lancaster. He became indeed a sort of favourite with the king. Dorset was proud, self-sufficient, and extravagant, but his manners were fascinating, his spirit buoyant, and Henry, who was accustomed to find the storms of party lowering like winter over his domestic circle, found relief only when Dorset was present. The present occasion, however, called forth other feelings in the haughty noble; he might be angry with his mother's plotting, but he was more indignant at the severity exercised against her; and far from furthering Henry's designs, he applauded her resistance, and so irritated the king, that it ended by his sudden arrest, and being committed to the Tower.
And now all hope was at an end for the unhappy lady. The various acts of her tragic history were to close in the obscurity and poverty of a convent-prison. Fearful that her despair would lead her to some deed that might at least disturb the quiet and order he loved, Henry had resolved that no delay should have place, but that on the very morrow she should be conveyed to Bermondsey. She was to be torn from her family—her five young daughters, with whom she resided. The heartless tyrant was callous to every pang that he inflicted, or rejoiced that he had the power to wound so deeply one whom he abhorred. Lady Brampton was with her to the last; not to sustain and comfort her; the queen's courage and firmness was far greater than that of her angry friend; she pointed out the hope, that the cruelties exercised towards her might animate the partisans of York to greater ardour; and tears forced themselves into her eyes only when she pictured Richard, her victorious sovereign and son, hastening to unbar her prison doors to restore her to liberty and rank. The night was spent in such discourses between the ladies. With early dawn came the fated hour, the guard, the necessity for instant departure. She disdained to show regret before Henry's emissaries; and with one word only to her friend—"I commithimto your guidance," she yielded to her fate; submitting to be torn from all she loved, and, without an expressed murmur, entered the litter that bore her singly to her living grave.
The same sun that rose upon the melancholy progress of Elizabeth Woodville towards Bermondsey, shone on a procession, more gaudy in appearance, yet, if that were possible, more sad at heart. This was the visit, ordered by the king, of the earl of Warwick to St. Paul's Cathedral; thus to contradict to the eyes of all men the pretender in Ireland. Warwick had spent a year in the Tower, in almost solitary imprisonment. Hopeless of freedom, worn in health, dejected from the overthrow of all the wild schemes he had nourished at Sheriff Hutton, linked with the love he bore his cousin, the Lady Elizabeth, now queen of England, he could hardly be recognized as the same youth who had been her companion during her residence there. He was pale; he had been wholly neglectful of his person; carking sorrow had traced lines on his young brow. At first he had contemplated resisting the order of being led out as a show to further his enemies' cause: one futile and vague hope, which could only have sprung up in a lover's heart, made him concede this point. Perhaps the court—the queen would be there.
He met several noble friends, commanded by Henry to attend him; for it was the king's policy to surround him with Yorkists, so to prove that he was no counterfeit. Alas!
"These cloudy princes, and heart-sorrowing peers,"
"These cloudy princes, and heart-sorrowing peers,"
assembled like shadows in the dim abyss, mourning the splendour of the day for ever set. They entered the cathedral, which stood a heavy Gothic pile, on a grassy mound, removed from all minor edifices. There was a vast assemblage of ladies and knights; all looked compassionately on this son of poor murdered Clarence, the luckless flower, brought to bloom for an hour, and then to be cast into perpetual darkness. The solemn religious rites, the pealing organ, the grandeur of the church, and chequered painted light thrown from the windows, for a moment filled with almost childish delight the earl's young heart; that this scene, adapted to his rank, should be so single and so transient, filled his soul with bitterness. Once or twice he thought to appeal to his noble friends, to call on them to resist the tyrant—Elizabeth's husband. His heart chilled at the idea; his natural timidity resumed its sway, and he was led back to the prison-fortress, despairing, but unresisting.
Yet, at this hour, events were in progress which filled many hearts with hope of such change as he would gladly hail. On the news of the queen's arrest. Lord Lincoln had departed with all speed to Flanders, to his aunt, the duchess of Burgundy, to solicit her aid to attack and overcome the enemy of their vanquished family. The Lady Margaret, sister of Edward the Fourth of England, and wife of Charles the Rash of Burgundy, was a woman distinguished by her wisdom and her goodness. When Charles fell before Nancy, and his more than princely domains descended into the hands of his only child, a daughter—and the false Louis the Eleventh of France, on one hand, and the turbulent Flemings on the other, coalesced to rend in pieces, and to prey upon, the orphan's inheritance—her mother-in-law, the Lady Margaret, was her sage and intrepid counsellor; and when this young lady died, leaving two infant children as co-heirs, the dowager duchess entirely loved, and tenderly brought them up, attending to their affairs with maternal solicitude, and governing the countries subject to them with wisdom and justice. This lady was warmly attached to her family: to her the earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovel resorted, revealing the state of things—how her nephew, young Richard, was concealed in poor disguise in French Flanders, and how they had consented to Richard Simon's plots, and hoped that their result would be to restore her brother's son to the throne of their native land.
The duchess of Burgundy possessed a proud and high spirit. The abasement in which her niece, the Lady Elizabeth, was held by the earl of Richmond; she, the real giver of his crown, not having herself been crowned; the rigour exercised towards the Yorkist chiefs, many of whom had been her defenders and friends in time of flight and defeat; the calumnies heaped on the various members of her royal house; made a prospect of displanting Henry, and of revenge, grateful to her. She acceded to the earl's request, gave him an aid of two thousand Germans, led by Martin Swartz, a man of family and note in Germany, providing them with vessels to take them to Ireland, and blessing their expedition with her best and earnest wishes.
On their arrival in Dublin, a gay and brilliant scene was acted, which raised the enthusiasm of the Irish, and spread a glory round the impostor they supported. The exhibition of the real earl of Warwick had produced no effect in Ireland; Thomas Geraldine, earl of Kildare, asserted that Henry had brought forward a counterfeit, and Lambert Simnel lost no credit among them. He was proclaimed king of England; he was crowned by the bishop of Meath with a diadem taken from an image of the Blessed Virgin; a parliament was convoked in his name, and every measure taken to insure his power in Ireland, and to gather together forces wherewith to invade the sister island.
The English lords felt far more anxiety than their allies in the result of this insurrection. Although it had been disregarded by the Irish, the effect produced in England by the visit of Warwick to St. Paul's was such as Henry had anticipated, and the counterfeit in Ireland found few supporters among the Yorkists. Still it was necessary to end as they had begun: to acknowledge the imposture, so to bring forward the young son of Edward, would have been to all appearance too barefaced a cheat. Lovel, as a gallant soldier, was ready to spend his blood in any enterprise that promised to advance the White Rose; but he, as well as the earl of Lincoln, mingling sad memories of the past with careful forethought, looked forward to the result of Richard Simon's contrivance with well-founded dread. Still they entertained no thought of retreat, but mustered their forces, and counselled with their associates for the furtherance of the cause. On the 4th of June, Lambert Simnel, under the name of Edward the Sixth, with his, so called, cousin De la Poole, Lord Lovel, and their constant attendant young Edmund Plantagenet, the Lords Thomas and Maurice Geraldine, with their force of savage scarce-armed Irish, and Martin Swartz, with his German auxiliaries, landed at the pile of Foudray, in Lancashire, where they were soon after joined by Sir Thomas Broughton, who brought some few English to fight and die for this unhappy conspiracy.
Henry was prepared for their arrival: to gain grace in his subjects' eyes, he first made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, and then, proceeding to the midland counties, held council to know whether it were best to encounter his foes out of hand, or to let them drag on; so to weary them by delay. A number of nobles and their followers joined the king, and it was agreed among them to press forward, before the enemy should gather force in England. Henry had a further view in this: he could not tell how far the secret of their plot, which he felt assured was the design to advance the young son of Edward, was divulged among the Yorkists, and how far believed; as yet the enterprise bore no ill guise for him, having at its head a manifest impostor; so he hastened onward to crush it utterly, before it assumed a more fearful form. The earl of Lincoln, eager to try the fortune of battle, advanced also on his side, and the rival armies drew nigh each other at Newark-upon-Trent. The king pitched his tents three miles beyond the town; and on the same night the earl encamped at Stoke, but a few miles distant. And now, after a reign of two years, as he had forced King Richard to fight for his crown against him, an adventurer and an invader in his realm, did Henry Tudor find himself in his adversary's position, about to risk life and kingdom on one cast of the die against troops as ill-assorted but as desperate and brave as his had been. Henry felt in his heart's core the thrilling pang, which a conviction that all is in the hands of fortune must ever impart to a human being who is her slave. He felt that his crown was but an usurpation, that his anointed and sacred head claimed no reverence from these enemies; he was degraded in his own eyes from being a sceptred king upheld by the laws, to a wild adventurer, his good sword his right; a fierce but disciplined anger filled his heart; his brows were bent, his voice was attuned to harshness, his thoughts were conversant with overthrow and death. The hour was come; he was impatient for its passing, and he led forth his troops, all well-appointed English soldiery, in such hope as the sight of a noble army might well inspire, in such dread as was the natural offspring of the many chances and changes that had occurred to the sovereigns of England during the late struggles.
The earl of Lincoln cherished still mightier fears; yet there was more of calm and dignity in his meditations than in the impatient misgivings of Henry. His heart sickened at the idea of battle and bloodshed: he felt himself responsible for the lives of all: and, while this nerved his heart to courage, it took rest from his eyes, and planted sorrow deep in his manly breast. The morrow! oh, the morrow! hours full of fate! whose looks forward and sees in the morrow the crown or ruin of the hopes of many, may well pray the swift-pacing hours to lag, and night to remain for ever as a spell to stop the birth of time.
But the morrow came; a day of slaughter and captivity for the Yorkist party. The battle was hard fought; the German auxiliaries were veteran soldiers, who spared neither blows nor blood; their leader, Martin Swartz, for valour, for strength, and for agility of body, was inferior to none among the warlike captains of those times. The Irish, though half-naked and ill-armed, fought with desperate bravery. In vain; the valour of Henry's soldiers was equal, their discipline and numbers superior. First the noble Lincoln fell, and his comrades were slaughtered around him, avenging his death. The Lords Geraldine, Swartz, and Sir Thomas Broughton, were found among the slain; Lord Lovel was never heard of more; the young Edmund Plantagenet, struck in the side by a dart, lay for dead upon the ground. Richard Simon and his false-seeming pupil were among the prisoners.
Such was the event of the last attempt of the Yorkists to raise the bruised White Rose to its old supremacy. All of high rank and power that owned this symbol were gone; Lincoln, the best column of its fortunes, was destroyed; nothing remained, save the orphan prince, the royal exile, a boy of thirteen years of age, brought up as the child of a Flemish money-lender. To hide himself in safe obscurity was his only wisdom, till time should give strength to his arm, sagacity to his plans, and power to his acts; happy if he could find any concealment sufficiently obscure, to baffle the discernment of Henry, and to save him from the arts of those whom he would employ to discover and seize on him.
Henry again felt himself secure on his throne: he deeply lamented the death of Lincoln, as he had hoped to learn from him the secret of the conspiracy. He found in Lambert Simnel the mere tool of others, and in contempt made him a scullion in his kitchen, so to throw derision on the attempt which had been made to exalt him. He dealt otherwise with Richard Simon. In the secrecy of his prison, every art was practised to induce him to make a full confession. Simon played a dastardly and a double part, half revealing, half disguising the truth. Henry became assured that his rival, the duke of York, survived, and he was led in some sort to guess at the place of his abode. He had promised liberty to Simon when the young prince should be in his hands; meanwhile he was imprisoned in the monastery in which he was fated to close his existence.
Our king he kept a false stewarde,Sir Aldingar they him call;A falser stewarde than he was one,Served not in bower nor hall.OLD BALLAD.
Our king he kept a false stewarde,Sir Aldingar they him call;A falser stewarde than he was one,Served not in bower nor hall.OLD BALLAD.
Our king he kept a false stewarde,Sir Aldingar they him call;A falser stewarde than he was one,Served not in bower nor hall.
OLD BALLAD.
Whoever writes concerning the actions of the men of the olden time, must sadden the reader by details of war, descriptions of fields of battle, narrations of torture, imprisonment, and death. But here also we find records of high virtues and exalted deeds. It is at first sight strange that men whose trade was murder, who habitually wore offensive weapons, whose chief happiness was derived from the glory they acquired by inflicting misery on others, should be among those who live in our memories as examples of what is most graceful and excellent in human nature. Too great security destroys the spirit of manhood, while the habit of hazardous enterprise strengthens and exalts it. It was not because they destroyed others, that the warriors of old were famous for honour, courage, and fidelity; but because, from some motive springing from the unselfish part of our nature, they exposed themselves to danger and to death.
It was at times such as these that friendship formed the chief solace of man's life. The thought of his lady-love supported the knight during his wanderings, and rewarded him on his return; but the society of his brothers in arms shortened the weary hours, and made peril pleasure. Death, the severer of hearts and destroyer of hope, is, in its actual visitation, the great evil of life—the ineffaceable blot, the tarnisher of the imagination's brightest hues; but if he never came, but only hovered, the anticipation of his advent might be looked upon as the refiner of our nature. To go out under the shadow of his dark banner, hand in hand, to encounter a thousand times his grim likeness; to travel on through unknown ways, during starless nights, through forests beset with enemies, over mountains, whose defiles hid him but to assure his aim; to meet him arrayed in his full panoply on the field of battle; to separate in danger; to meet on the verge of annihilation; and still, through every change, to reap joy, because every peril was mutual, every emotion shared, was a school for heroic friendship that does not now exist. In those times, also, man was closer linked with nature than now; and the sublimity of her creations exalted his imagination, and elevated his enthusiasm—dark woods, wild mountains, and the ocean's vast expanse, form a stage on which, when we act our parts, we feel that mightier natures than our own witness the scenes we present, and our hearts are subdued by awe to resignation.
Edmund Plantagenet, the forest-bred son of Richard the Third, the late companion of the illustrious Lincoln and gallant Lovel, lay long insensible on the field of battle, surrounded by the dead—he awoke from his swoon to the consciousness that they lay strewed around him dead, whom he had worshipped as heroes, loved as friends. Life became a thankless boon; willingly would he have closed his eyes, and bid his soul also go on her journey to the unknown land, to which almost all those to whom he had been linked during his past existence had preceded him. He was rescued by a charitable friar from this sad state—his wound was dressed—life, and with it liberty, restored to him. After some reflection, the first use he resolved to make of these gifts was to visit the young duke of York at Tournay.
Edmund's mind, without being enterprising, was full of latent energy, and contemplative enthusiasm. The love of virtue reigned paramount in it; nor could he conceive happiness unallied to some pursuit, whose origin was duty, whose aim was the good of others. His father, his ambition and his downfall, were perpetual subjects for reflection; to atone for the first and redeem the last, in the person of his nephew, became, in his idea, the only fitting end of his life. Fostering this sentiment, he speedily formed the determination of attaching himself to the exiled duke of York: first, to devote himself to the preserving and educating him during childhood—and secondly, to fight and die for him, when the time was ripe to assert his rights.
During his hazardous journey to Flanders, Edmund was supported by that glowing sensation which borrows the hues and sometimes the name of happiness; it was an ecstatic mood that soared above the meaner cares of life, and exalted him by the grandeur of his own ideas. Self-devotion is, while it can keep true to itself, the best source of human enjoyment: there is small alloy when we wholly banish our own wretched clinging individuality, in our entire sacrifice at the worshipped shrine. Edmund became aware of the value of his own life, as he planned how in future he should be the guardian and protector of his unfriended, peril-encircled orphan cousin. A religious sentiment of filial love also influenced him; for thus he could in some sort repair the wrongs committed by his father. There was much in Edmund's temperament that might have rendered him a mere dreamer. The baser ends of common men possessed no attractions for him; but a lofty purpose developed the best points of his character.
It was early dawn, when, a month after the battle of Stoke, Plantagenet, in pursuance of his design, arrived at the cottage of Madeline de Faro, where, under the lowly name of Perkin Warbeck, dwelt the noble scion of the house of York. It was a lovely spot—trees embowered the cot, roses bloomed in the garden, and jessamine and woodbine were twined round the porch. The morning breeze and rising sun filled the atmosphere with sweets. Already the cottagers were enjoying its fragrance, and Edmund, as he alighted, beheld the object of his journey—the fair-haired stripling prince and his protectress Madeline. Edmund was one-and-twenty, but his brow was more bent, his eye more thoughtful, his cheek more pale and sunk than befitted his age; it was only when he smiled that frankness displayed solemnity, and those who conversed with him were ever eager to call forth those smiles, which, like sunbeams that chase the shadows on a green hill-side, made darkness light. Confidence readily springs up between the open-hearted and good; and Edmund and the inhabitants of the cottage found no impediment to entire reliance on each other. Madeline was overjoyed that her young charge should find manly guardianship in his cousin, and mentioned how often her fears had been awakened on his account, and how suspicions had got abroad concerning him among the citizens of Tournay.
Madeline, the sister of the Fleming, John Warbeck, was married to a Spaniard in the service of Portugal. In those days, just previous to the discovery of America by Columbus, while that illustrious man was offering his unesteemed services at Lisbon, the Portuguese were full of the spirit of enterprise and maritime adventure. Each year new vessels were sent southward along the unexplored shores of Africa, to discover beyond the torrid zone a route to India. Hernan de Faro was a mariner—it was during one of his voyages to Holland that he had seen and married Madeline, and he left her in her native country, while he pursued his fortunes down the Golden Coast as far as the Cape of Good Hope. He had been absent longer than she had anticipated, and each day might bring the wanderer back, when he purposed taking her with him to his native Spain. What, then, must become of Richard? Plantagenet saw at once the necessity of visiting the court of Burgundy, and of placing her nephew at the disposition of the Duchess Margaret.
The young prince was now fourteen—he had shot up in height beyond his years, beautiful in his boyhood, and of greater promise for the future. His clear blue laughing eyes—his clustering auburn hair—his cheeks, whose rosy hue contrasted with the milk-white of his brow—his tall and slender but agile person, would have introduced him to notice among a crowd of strangers.
His very youthful voice was attuned to sweetness. If Edmund found the Lady Margaret lukewarm, he need only lead the noble boy into her presence to interest her in his favour. Richard heard with tearful eyes of the imprisonment of his mother, and the slaughter of his kinsmen and friends. His heart for the moment desired vengeance; he would himself seek his aunt of Burgundy, and aided by her, attack the usurper. With difficulty he permitted his cousin to depart alone; but he was obliged to yield, and Plantagenet set out for Brussels, promising a speedy return.
About a week after Edmund's departure, another visitor arrived at the cottage of the exile. A violent storm had overtaken Duke Richard and his constant companion, Madeline's daughter, in one of their wanderings in the fields near Tournay. As they stood for shelter under a half-ruined building, a traveller came to share the asylum. He was a Frenchman—a Provençal by his accent; for he immediately entered into conversation with them. As he is a man spoken of in the Chronicles, he shall receive his name at once; this apparently chance-traveller was Frion, Stephen Frion, King Henry's secretary. He had been employed to search out the young prince by such tokens as Richard Simon had given, and chance had caused him to fall in with Edmund, whom he had before remarked in attendance on the earl of Lincoln. Easily guessing that Edmund's journey might have connection with his own, he tracked him to Tournay, and then by some untoward chance lost sight of him. The indefatigable spy had spent the last week in a particular survey of every spot round the town and in the neighbouring cities, to discover his lost clue. Overtaken by a storm on his return from Lisle, he suddenly found himself under a shed with a youth whose appearance at once excited his strongest curiosity.
What Frion loved beyond all other things was power and craft. He had been a subject of the poetical King René of Provence; but, despatched on some occasion to Louis the Eleventh, he entered into the service of that monarch, whose subtlety and faithlessness were a school of wisdom to this man. On one subject did he love to dwell—the contrast between Charles of Burgundy and Louis of France; the first commencing his reign by combating and vanquishing the latter, and dying miserably at last by a traitor's hand, his armies cut to pieces, his domains the unresisting prey of his rival; while Louis, by serpent ways, by words—not deeds—gained every point, won every follower, and established his rule at last over the greater part of the wide territories of the fallen duke. In a minor way Frion aimed at imitating Louis; but he was naturally more fiery and rash. He had visited Italy also, and studied there the wiles and cruelties of the Italian lords; crossing back to Marseilles, he had been seized by corsairs and carried to Africa:—here he put in practice some of his lessons, and contrived to make himself a favourite with his Mahometan master, who afterwards crossed to Spain to serve under the Moorish king of Granada. Frion was quickly distinguished for his sagacity in the divided counsels of this distracted kingdom, and became the trusty adviser of him called Boabdil el Chico. When this unfortunate sovereign was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, Frion was a chief mediator between them and the Sultana Ayza. At the court of Ferdinand and Isabella he met several Frenchmen, who awakened in his heart a keen desire to revisit his native country. He took advantage of an embassy thither from the court of Spain, to fulfil his wishes, but arrived at Plessis only in time to witness Louis' death. Two years afterwards he was found in the train of the earl of Richmond—the future secretary, spy, and favourite of Henry the Seventh—now travelling by his order to find, seize, or destroy, the last blossom of the uprooted White Rose.
Frion was rather handsome in appearance, with bright black eyes and dark hair, a complexion embrowned by the sun, a look of gaiety—unless when controlled by the will of a superior, he was always laughing—a quiet kind of sarcastic laugh; he looked not the man Cæsar would have feared, except that his person was rather inclined to leanness; but he was active and well versed in martial exercises, though better in clerkly accomplishments. His early youth had been chiefly employed in copying poetry for King René—he wrote beautifully, and his small white hands were the objects of his own very great admiration. Such was his outward look; he had stores of science and knowledge within, which he seldom displayed, or, when necessary, let appear with all the modesty of one who deemed such acquirements were of little worth—useful sometimes, but fitter for a servitor than his lord. No words could describe his wiliness, his power of being all things to all men, his flattery, his knowledge of human nature, his unparalleled artifice, which, if it could be described, would not have been the perfect thing it was: it was not silken, it was not glossy, but it wound its way unerringly. Could it fail—the rage and vengeance to follow were as certain as dire, for, next to love of power, vanity ruled this man; all he did was right and good, other pursuits contemptible and useless.
Such was the serpent-spirited man who contrived to partake Richard's shelter; he eyed him keenly, he addressed him, and the prince replied to his questions about an asylum for the night, by a courteous invitation to his home. "The boy speaks not like a cotter: his eye beams with nobleness. What a freak of nature, to make one in appearance a king's son, the plodding offspring of a rude Fleming!" As these thoughts passed through Frion's mind, the truth came not across him; and he even hesitated for a moment whether he should not, now the storm had passed, pursue his way: but his garments were wet, the ways miry, night at hand. At a second thought he accepted the invitation, and leading his horse, he accompanied the youthful pair to their cottage home.
Madeline, unsuspicious of one obviously a Frenchman, received him without fear, and after a fire had dried the visitor's dress, they sat down to a frugal supper. Frion, according to his usual manner, strove to please his hosts. His gay discourse, the laughable, yet interesting accounts he gave of various adventures that had befallen him, made all three—the fair Madeline the ardent princely boy, and the dark-eyed daughter of de Faro—sit in chained attention. When he heard that Madeline was united to a Spaniard, he spoke of Spain, of Granada and the Moorish wars; Richard's eyes flashed, and the dark orbs of the girl dilated with wonder and delight.
At length he spoke of England, and his words implied that he had lately come thence. "How fares the poor island?" asked the youth; "such stories of its tyrant reach us here, that methinks its fields must be barren, its people few."
"Had you been my comrade, young master, through merry Kent," said Frion, "you would speak in another strain. Plenty and comfort, thanks to King Harry and the Red Rose, flourish there. The earth is rich in corn, the green fields peopled with fat kine, such as delight yon islanders. 'Give an Englishman beef and mustard,' says our French proverb, 'and he is happy;' they will find dearth of neither, while the sage Henry lives, and is victorious."
"Yet we are told here," cried the youth, "that this Welsh earl, whom you call king, grinds the poor people he has vanquished to the dust, making them lament him they named Crookback, who, though an usurper, was a munificent sovereign."
These words from a Fleming or a Frenchman sounded strange to Frion; the doubt, which he wondered had not before presented itself, now came full-fledged, and changed at its birth to certainty; yet, as the angler plays with the hooked fish, he replied, "I, a stranger in the land, saw its fair broad fields, and thought their cultivators prosperous; I heard that the king was victorious over his foes, and deemed his subjects happy. Yet, I bethink me, murmurs were abroad, of taxes and impositions. They spoke, with regret, of the White Rose, and scowled when they said that Elizabeth of York was rather a handmaiden in her husband's palace, than queen of fertile England."
"Now, were I an English knight, with golden spurs," said the stripling, "I would challenge to mortal combat that recreant Tudor, and force him to raise fair Elizabeth to her fitting elevation: woe the while, all England's good knights are slain, and the noble Lincoln, the last and best of all, has perished!"
"You speak unwisely and unknowingly, of things you wot not of," said Madeline, alarmed at the meaning glance of Frion; "good nephew Perkin, your eyes see not even the English white cliffs, much less can your mind understand its dangerous policy."
"Nay, dear mother," remarked her little daughter, "you have told me that the noble earl and the good Lord Lovel had been kind guardians to my cousin Peterkin: you chid him not when he wept their death, and you may suffer him to reproach their foe."
"I know nothing of these lords," said Frion, "whose names are a stumbling-block to a Frenchman's tongue. But methinks it is well for us that they aim at each other's hearts, and make booty of their own provender, no longer desolating the gay fields of France with their iron hoofs."
And now, since that he had found him whom he sought, Frion talked again of other matters, and, as before, his smooth and gay discourse gained him pleased auditors. At length, the peaceful cottagers retired to rest, and Frion sunk to sleep under their hospitable roof, after he had thought of various plans by which he might possess himself of the prince's person;—the readiest and safest way was to entice him to accompany him alone some little space, no matter how short: he trusted to his own skill to draw him still further and further on, till he should be put on board the boat that would ferry him to his own revolted England.