back. His mind is said to have been harassed with images of terror, from consciousness of the many crimes which he had crowded into a life of thirty-two years.

The royal line of Plantagenet ended with this king. Among the princes of this house are some of the ablest, as well as some of the weakest, of the English sovereigns. They were mostly engaged in struggles with their barons, and wars in France, which were in many respects favourable to the liberties of England, from the necessity of appealing to the Commons for assistance. The art of printing was becoming more and more known and valued, and the dawn of less barbarous times is henceforth discernible. Some of the opinions for which Lord Cobham died were maintained in the reign of Henry VI. by Reginald Pecock, successively Bishop of St. Asaph and Chichester; whose writings were especially directed against the notion that the Romish Church is infallible. Very different accounts have been given of his tenets on other subjects, but there seems little doubt that he held several errors, though he appeared to be earnest on the side of truth.

Thomas Bourchier, A.D. 1454— | Henry Dene, A.D. 1500-1504.

1486.

John Morton, A.D. 1486-1500.

William Wareham, A.D. 15041533.

HENRY would probably have met with more opposition, had it not been understood that he was to marry Elizabeth of York. He was himself unwilling to owe his crown to her title, and the marriage did not take place till after his own coronation. The submission which he received from the friends of the house of York was never very hearty. His manners were cold and repulsive; and they disliked him for his distant behaviour to his queen, as well as for continuing the imprisonment of the young Earl of Warwick,

the son of the unfortunate Duke of Clarence. He was especially detested by Margaret, the duchess-dowager of Burgundy (sister of Edward IV.), and that princess was always ready to assist, if she did not contrive, the plots and impostures by which Henry was harassed.

A youth named Lambert Simnel was taught by a crafty priest to personate the Earl of Warwick, who was said to have escaped from the Tower. Simnel was taken to Ireland, and his claims were acknowledged by many noblemen in that island. The king produced the real earl; but Simnel's cause was supported by the Earl of Lincoln, the son of Elizabeth, another of Edward's sisters, who succeeded in raising some troops. A battle took place at Stoke, near Newark (A.D. 1487), in which Lincoln was slain, and Simnel taken prisoner. He was made a scullion in the royal kitchen.

Another imposture of the same kind was contrived a few years after. It was given out that Richard, duke of York, had escaped from the Tower, and a young man, named Perkin Warbeck, was persuaded to assume his character. The Duchess of Burgundy saluted the impostor as the White Rose of England;" the King of Scots received him with all honour, and gave him the hand of his own relative, the Lady Katharine Gordon. Warbeck afterwards landed in Cornwall; but being met by the royal forces, he secretly withdrew, and took sanctuary at Beaulieu, in Hants. He was at length committed to the Tower, where he persuaded the Earl of Warwick to join him in attempting an escape. The plot was discovered, Warbeck was hung at Tyburn, and the earl soon afterwards beheaded on Tower-hill. The death of this prince, whose faculties were weakened by his long and early imprisonment, is a great blot on Henry's memory. It has been thought that he was tempted to the crime by a message from Ferdinand, king of Spain, whose daughter, the Princess Katharine, he was anxious to obtain as a wife for his son, Prince Arthur. Ferdinand sent word to Henry, that his title would never be sure while Warwick was yet alive. This marriage afterwards took place, but Prince Arthur died within six months of its celebration. The king also married his eldest daughter (Margaret) to James IV., king of Scotland.

The remainder of Henry's reign was free from outward insurrections; but he became very unpopular, from the

arbitrary character of his government, which he carried on, in a great measure, by means of an arbitrary court of law now for the first time instituted, which was called the Star-chamber, from the decorations of the room in which it met. The king presided there in person, and sanctioned its proceedings. He was also a man of unbounded avarice ; to gratify which he employed two creatures of his own, named Empson and Dudley, in extorting money from his subjects by reviving obsolete laws and dormant claims of the crown, and thus he amassed an unusual amount of treasure. His reign, however, was very beneficial to England, which needed peace and a firm government. It was Henry's policy to break the overgrown power of the nobles; and with this view he enforced the law which forbade any nobleman to give his livery to any retainers besides his household servants. The practice thus forbidden had been abused to such a degree, that the king-maker, Warwick, is said to have had 30,000 retainers who wore his badge.

A characteristic anecdote is told of Henry, which shows how little he was withheld by friendly feeling from enforcing a law, which both favoured his policy and filled his coffers. He had been received with great splendour by the Earl of Oxford, one of the most faithful friends of the house of Lancaster. As the king left the castle, a large number of retainers in the earl's livery were drawn up in two rows to do honour to his guest. Henry artfully complimented the earl on his hospitality and the numbers of his household servants. Oxford replied that they were retainers who wore his livery on such occasions to do him honour. The king started, and exclaimed, "My lord, I thank you for your good cheer; but I must not endure to have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must speak with you." The earl was fined 15,000 marks.

The king died in the year 1509, and was succeeded by Henry, his only surviving son.

In this reign the way to the New World was pointed out by Columbus, a native of Genoa, in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. England had nearly had the honour of sending forth Columbus on his voyage; but his brother Bartholomew was detained by a series of accidents from applying to Henry for assistance, until it was too late. The required aid was at once promised; but Columbus had

already set sail. Henry was vexed at being crossed in a matter in which he had shown more than his usual liberality, and determined to do something in the way of discovery. Accordingly, in the year 1496, after Columbus had returned to Europe, he fitted out a small fleet under the command of John Cabot, a Venetian: the results were the discovery of Newfoundland and other regions, of which Columbus had scarcely dreamed. Thus Henry had some honour for naval enterprise; indeed, we must not forget that it was he who laid the foundation of the British navy.

Events, which need not be anticipated, caused this reign to be the last in which church architecture flourished; nay, with a few exceptions, in which colleges were founded. Henry built the chapel which bears his name, at the east end of Westminster Abbey. His mother, Margaret, countess of Richmond, began St. John's college, Cambridge, and left its completion to her executors, Fox, bishop of Winchester, and Fisher, bishop of Rochester. Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, the founder of Magdalen college, Oxford, must be assigned to an earlier reign, for he died in 1486, the year after Henry's accession to the throne. The chapels of King's college, Cambridge, and of St. George's, Windsor, belong also to the earlier part of the fifteenth century.

CHAPTER XXV.

HENRY VIII.

Born at Greenwich. Buried at Windsor. Reigned 38 years. From A.D. 1509 to A.D. 1547.

Archbishops of Canterbury.

William Wareham, A.D. 1504—1533.
Thomas Cranmer, A.D. 1533-1555.

THE young king was handsome in person, and popular and jovial in his manners. He had been carefully educated, and not only excelled in martial exercises, but had acquired considerable scholarship, and was well read in the writings of the school divines. His marriage with Katharine of Arra

gon, his brother's widow, was celebrated with great magnificence; and his passion for pageantry and pleasure contrasted favourably in the opinion of his subjects with the avarice of his father, whose agents (Empson and Dudley) were now tried and brought to punishment.

Henry soon led an army with little reason into France; and though the war, where he was present, resembled rather the pomp of tournaments than more serious conflict, yet a battle was gained near Terouenne, which was called the "Battle of Spurs," as the French made more use of their spurs than of their swords. The same year, however, the Earl of Surrey gave the Scots one of the most disastrous defeats they ever sustained, in the battle of Flodden Field, A.D. 1513. James IV., who had taken part with Louis against his brother-in-law, was slain in this battle with many of his principal nobles. His son (now James V.) was at this time an infant. On the peace which followed, Henry gave his sister Mary in marriage to Louis XII., who died three months after his nuptials, and was succeeded by Francis I. Mary then married the Duke of Suffolk, to whom she had been attached before.

The king at this time lavished his favour on Thomas Wolsey, the son, as was said, of a butcher at Ipswich, who from his talents for business had been brought forward in the last reign, and though in holy orders, was no less useful to Henry in affairs of state, than welcome as the associate and minister of his pleasures. He became chancellor of England as well as archbishop of York, was made a car dinal by the pope, and enjoyed an enormous revenue, with which he lived in royal state, and on more than one occasion himself aspired to the Popedom. His good offices with the king were sought both by Francis I. and by the Emperor Charles V. (who was also king of Spain), the two most powerful sovereigns in Europe.

The vanity of Henry was flattered by finding how much his alliance was courted by these rival monarchs. Charles was the nephew of Queen Katharine, and visited the English court at Dover, when Henry was on his way to give Francis a personal interview, which that king had eagerly desired. This meeting took place near Calais, and the plain on which it was held was called " The Field of the Cloth of Gold," from the lavish costliness of this royal