monarch in cold blood. Margaret they allowed to live, in hopes of her being ransomed by the king of France; and that monarch in effect paid 50,000 crowns for her freedom. She died a few years afterwards in France-a woman whom, but for some instances of cruelty in the beginning of her career, all Europe must have venerated and admired.

Edward IV., now firmly seated on the throne, abandoned himself to vicious pleasures. His life was passed in a succession of riots and debauchery, and acts of tyranny and cruelty. His brother, the duke of Clarence, taking the part of a friend who had fallen a victim to the king's displeasure, and inveighing severely against the rigor of his sentence, was on that account alone, arraigned and condemned to suffer death. The only favor shown him was to choose the manner of it, and he very whimsically chose to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey. A war was proclaimed against France, but during the preparation for this enterprise, which was highly grateful to the nation, an event no less grateful happened, which was the death of Edward IV., at the age of forty-two, poisoned, as is supposed, by his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester. He left two sons, the eldest Edward V., a boy of thirteen years of age. Gloucester, named Protector of the kingdom, gave orders that the two princes for security, should be lodged in the Tower. Hastings, a friend to the royal family and an enemy to tyranny, had too strongly expressed his concern for their safety, and attachment to their interest. Richard, on a most frivolous pretence of treason, ordered this nobleman to be arrested in the council, and he was instantly led forth to execution. The duke of Buckingham, the slavish instrument of an ambitious tyrant, had wrought upon a mob of the meanest of the populace to declare that they wished Richard, duke of Gloucester, to accept of the crown; this was interpreted to be the voice of the nation. The crafty tyrant, with affected scruples and with much appearance of humility, was at length prevailed on to yield to their desires and to accept the proffered crown. His elevation had been purchased by a series of crimes, and was now to be secured by an act of accumulated horror. Three assassins, by the command of Richard, entered at midnight the apartment of the Tower where the princes lay asleep, and, smothering them in the bed-clothes, buried them in a corner of the building.

It is but justice to observe, that this atrocious fact has been altogether doubted. The historians of the times, being under the influence of the house of Lancaster, are to be read with much caution; and nothing, after all, is given as evidence of this fact but common fame. Those writers all fix the time of Henry VI.'s death to the 21st of May, 1471. Guthrie, however, has produced from the records undoubted evidence, that he was alive on the 12th of June thereafter; and some historians, even of the Lancaster party, affirm that it was reported at the time, that he died of anguish and grief of mind. It is certain that his body was conveyed to St. Paul's and there exposed to public view, a circumstance which ill agrees with the idea of a private murder.—See Guthrie's History of England, vol. ii., p. 719, 720.

At length after a reign of two tedious years, an avenger of these atrocious crimes appeared in the person of Henry, earl of Richmond, a prince of the lineage of John of Gaunt. Henry was yet very young when he formed the design of dethroning Richard, and of reclaiming England as the patrimony of the house of Lancaster. His first attempt was unsuccessful; and after his party had been twice defeated, he was obliged to return for shelter to Brittany. Thence he was forced by the treachery of the duke of Brittany's minister, who had privately covenanted to deliver him up to Richard. Betaking himself to the province of Anjou, he was aided by Charles VIII. of France, with a small army of 2000 men. With this slender support he landed in England. The Welsh flocked to his standard, and, animated with courage, he ventured to give battle to Richard on the field of Bosworth. Richard III. met him with an army double his numbers; and the event would probably have been unfortunate for Richmond, had not lord Stanley, with a large body of troops, changed sides in the heat of the engagement, and fought against the usurper. This decided the fate of the day; the army of Richard was entirely defeated, and the tyrant himself met with a better death than his crimes and cruelties deserved. Seeing that all was lost, he rushed with desperate fury into the thickest of the enemy, and fell pierced with innumerable wounds. The crown which he wore on his head during the engagement was immediately placed upon the head of the conqueror.

The army of Richmond sang an hymn to God upon the field of battle, and, with the loudest acclamations, proclaimed him as Henry VII. king of England. This auspicious day put an end to the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. Henry, by marrying the princess Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., united in his own person the interests and rights of both these families. This excellent prince, who knew how to govern as well as to conquer, was one of the best monarchs that ever reigned in England. The nation, under his wise and politic administration, soon recovered the wounds it had sustained in those unhappy contests. The parliaments which he assembled made the most salutary laws, the people paid their taxes without reluctance, the nobles were kept in due subordination, and that spirit of commercial industry for which the English have been, in these latter ages, justly distinguished, began to make vigorous advances under the reign of Henry VII. The only failing of this prince was an economy, perhaps too rigid, which, in his latter years, degenerated even into avarice; and though his taxes were not oppressive, he left in the treasury, at his death, no less than two millions sterling; a certain proof of two things—the one, that it is possible, without oppressing the people, for all the emergencies of government to be most amply supplied; the other, that the prince's economy can effectually check that dissipation of

the public money by corrupt and rapacious officers, which increases both the weakness of the state and the grievances of the people.

The reign of Henry VII. was disturbed for awhile by two very singular enterprises. The earl of Warwick, son of the late duke of Clarence, had been confined by Richard in the Tower, and by his long imprisonment was totally unknown, and unacquainted with the world. One Simon, a priest of Oxford, trained up a young man, Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker, to counterfeit the earl of Warwick's person, and instructed him in the knowledge of all the facts which were necessary to support the imposture. He first made his public appearance in Dublin, where he found many to espouse his cause, and he was there solemnly crowned king of England and Ireland. Thence passing over to England, he ventured to give battle to Henry near Nottingham. Simnel with his tutor, the priest, were both taken prisoners. The priest, who could not be tried by the civil power, was imprisoned for life; and the impostor himself, who was too mean an object for the revenge of Henry, was employed by him as a scullion in his kitchen.

This enterprise was succeeded by another, which was not so easily defeated. The old duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., and widow of Charles the Bold, who wished by all means to embroil the government of Henry, caused a report to be spread that the young duke of York, who, along with his brother Edward, was hitherto believed to have been smothered in the Tower by Richard III., was still alive-and she soon after produced a young man who assumed his name and character: this was Perkin Warbeck, the son of a Jew broker of Antwerp, a youth of great personal beauty and insinuating address. He found means, for a considerable time, to carry on the deception, and seemed, from his valor and abilities, to be not undeserving of the rank which he assumed. For five years he supported his cause by force of artns, and was aided by a respectable proportion of the English nobility. James IV., king of Scotland, espoused his interest, and gave him in marriage a relation of his own, a daughter of the earl of Huntley. After various changes of fortune, during all which Perkin showed himself to be a man of genius and intrepidity, he was at length abandoned by his followers on the approach of the royal army, which greatly exceeded them in numbers, and forced to deliver himself up to Henry's mercy, who only condemned him to perpetual imprisonment. This, however, was too much for his impatient spirit. He attempted to make his escape, and secretly tampered with the unfortunate Warwick, still a prisoner in the Tower, to raise a new insurrection; the consequence was, that Perkin Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn, and young Warwick, tried by his peers, condemned and beheaded on Tower-hill.

It is necessary to remark, that the real character and pretensions of Perkin Warbeck are, to this day, a subject of uncertainty and of controversy; and upon an examination of the evidence on both sides of the question, there are many now, as there were then, who believe that this young man was, in reality, the son of king Edward IV. Carte, in his History of England, was, I believe, the first who ventured to suggest his doubts with regard to the common notion of Warbeck's being an impostor, and other reasons have since been added by Guthrie, which strongly countenance the supposition that this young man was really the duke of York. Horace Walpole, in his Historic Doubts on the Reign of Richard III., has taken up the same side of the question, as if it had been a new idea started by himself, though the authors I have mentioned have furnished him with the best part of his argu

ments.

CHAPTER XV.

SCOTLAND from the Middle of the Fourteenth Century to the End of the Reign of James V.-David II.-Robert II., first of the House of Stuart-Robert III. James I., II., III., and IV.—Marriage of James IV. with Margaret, Daughter of Henry VII. founds the hereditary Title of the House of Stuart to the Throne of England-Battle of Flodden-James V.-Ancient Constitution of the Scottish Government.

THE feudal aristocracy had attained to a great degree of strength in Scotland in the time of Robert Bruce. In return for the services of the nobles in placing him upon the throne, Robert bestowed on them large grants of the lands of which they had dispossessed the English. Property before this time had been subject to great revolutions in Scotland. Edward I., having forfeited the estates of many of the Scottish barons, granted them to his English subjects. These were expelled by the Scots, who seized their lands. Amidst such frequent changes, many held their possessions by titles extremely defective, and Robert formed on this ground a scheme for checking the growing power and wealth of his nobles. He summoned them to appear, and show by what rights they held their lands. "By this right," said each of them, laying his hand upon his sword; "by the sword we gained them, and by that we will defend them." Robert, apprehensive of the consequences of exasperating this resolute spirit of his nobles, wisely dropped the scheme.

Robert Bruce had a son, David, and a daughter, Margery. In a parliament, which he held at Ayr, in the year 1315, before the birth of his son David, he had solemnly settled the succession to the crown of Scotland, failing heirs of himself, upon his brother, Edward Bruce, and his male issue; on failure of whom, upon his daughter Margery and her heirs. Margery was afterwards married, in her father's lifetime, to Walter, the high steward of Scotland, of which marriage sprang Robert, the first of the house of Stuart who sat upon the Scottish throne, and who succeeded in virtue of this settlement of the crown made by his grandfather, Robert Bruce.

Robert Bruce died in the year 1329, and was succeeded by his son, David Bruce, then an infant. Taking advantage of this minority, Edward Baliol, the son of John, formerly king of Scotland, urged his pretensions to the crown; and, secretly assisted by Edward III. of England, entered the kingdom at the head of an army. He found a considerable number of partisans among the factious barons, and so great, for awhile, was his success, that he was crowned king at Scone, while the young David was conveyed to France, where he received an honorable protection. But matters did not long remain in this situation. The meanness of Edward Baliol, who was contented to acknowledge the sovereignty of Edward III. over his kingdom, deprived him of the affections of the nation. Randolph, earl of Murray, Robert, the steward of Scotland, and Sir William Douglas, roused the Bruce's party to arms, and, with the aid of Philip of Valois, king of France, David was restored to his kingdom; but it was only to sustain a new reverse of fortune. In an invasion of the English territory, the Scots were opposed by a powerful army, which was led into the field by the high-spirited Philippa, the queen of Edward III. The English gained a complete victory at the battle of Durham, and David, as we have formerly seen, was taken prisoner, and conveyed to the Tower of London. It was, soon after, his fortune to find a brother monarch in the same situation, John, king of France, the son of Philip of Valois, whom we have seen taken prisoner by the Black Prince, at the famous battle of Poictiers, and conducted in triumph to London. In this state of captivity David remained for eleven years, when, in consequence of a treaty of amity between the kingdoms, and a large ransom paid by the Scots, their monarch was again restored to his throne. During a reign thus perplexed, whatever had been the inclinations of the sovereign, it is impossible that his kingdom could have derived much benefit from his administration. David died in the year 1370, and, leaving no issue, the crown, according to the destination of his father, Robert, went to the son of his sister Margery, who was Robert, the high steward of Scotland.

The reign of this first prince of the house of Stuart exhibits no events which are worthy of commemoration. It passed in a