had the real earl of Warwick brought out of the Tower, and paraded through the streets; and caused him to be visited by several noblemen who had known him from his childhood; that their report might convince the nation the other was an impostor. The Irish, however, still would have it, that theirs was the true Plantagenet, and Henry's a person employed to deceive the crowd. And in this opinion they were encouraged by the conduct of the earl of Lincoln; who passed over from England to Flanders, and from thence with lord Lovell, to Dublin; whither he was followed by 2000 Flemish soldiers under Martin Swart, a veteran commander. This Flemish force, he said, his aunt the duchess Margaret, had bid him conduct to her nephew's aid; and he declared that Simnell was indeed his cousin Warwick.

For half a year Symonds and his pupil fared sumptuously; and the youth talked of that foul usurper, the earl of Richmond. But the leaders of the plot did not mean to be content with wresting from Henry that narrow district, on the eastern side of Ireland, which alone acknowledged the governor's authority. They raised recruits, though unable to equip them; and in the summer of 1487, they embarked Swart and his troops, with a host of halfarmed Irishmen, and landed them at Furness, in Lancashire; where Sir Thomas Broughton had prepared his tenants to join them, and from whence ford Lovell proposed to lead them into that part of Yorkshire, whose inhabitants had risen the year before at his summons.

In the meanwhile, Henry had not been inactive ; and was now posted at Kenilworth, as a central situation. He had given the earl of Oxford the command of his army. But he himself regulated its march, with a discipline to which the English had

⚫ See p. 30.

BATTLE OF STOKE.

55

June 16,

1487.

been wholly unused under the Plantagenets; insisting that all vagabonds should be kept out of the camp; forbidding the soldiers to molest the unarmed peasantry; and declaring that robbery, or even the taking of provisions from any one without paying the fair market price, should be punished with death. These precautions for the protection of his peaceable subjects, gave such satisfaction, that none of the country people joined his enemies. They had advanced as far south as the Trent unopposed, but unsupported, when the king drew near them. We read with surprise that his army lost its way between Nottingham and Newark; but having procured guides at the village of Ratcliffe, lord Oxford marched on to Stoke; and there a decisive battle was fought. Swart and his Flemings nearly all perished, after a fierce attack upon the royalist forces; whilst the ill-armed Irish were speedily put to flight. The earl of Lincoln, Sir Thomas Broughton, and two lords Fitzgeralds, kinsmen of Kildare, fell in the battle. Lord Lovell, being seen to fly the field, and heard of no more, was thought to have been drowned in crossing the Trent; but lord Bacon, in his history of Henry VII. notices a report that he lived several years after this battle concealed in some cavern. And about 60 years later than Bacon wrote, an underground apartment was accidentally broken in upon at Minster Lovell, the ancient mansion of the Lovell's; and in it was found a mouldering skeleton, still seated, with the head reclining on a table. From whence it has been supposed, that this unhappy partner of king Richard's crimes escaped to his own home, but only to perish by a hideous, lingering death; having trusted a servant to lock him up in this hidden chamber, and then dying there of hunger; either because the man intentionally left him to perish, or because this person, whose indiscretion perhaps occasioned the report

lord Bacon heard, was himself murdered, or died too suddenly to make known to a friend what his lord's situation was.

Symonds the priest, and his pupil Simnell, were among the prisoners taken at Stoke. But instead of imitating the vindictive ferocity of the princes of the house of York, Henry left Symonds to be judged by the ecclesiastical courts; which, he well knew, would condemn no priest to die for any crime except heresy. Whilst, with a still more honourable lenity, he inflicted no severer punishment on Simnell than that of employing him as a scullion in his kitchen; no great hardship to a boy now confessed to be a baker's son.. And when he had served a while in this humble post, the king, good naturedly, promoted him to be one of his falconers.

In Ireland, the earl of Kildare, on expressing his sorrow for having been misled, was not only forgiven, but was continued in authority. And thus tranquillity was restored in every part of his dominions. Henry, however, had observed that the Yorkists, who could scarcely allow that he had any right to be their king, except as the husband of Edward's heiress, were becoming indignant at her not being yet crowned. So he issued orders for her coronation, at the same time that he settled the preliminaries of a treaty with James III., king of Scotland; by which that monarch, had he not been slain by a priest, was to have married the queen dowager of England, Edward the Fourth's widow; and was to have accepted two of her daughters for his sons.

Having thus soothed the angry feelings of a party which was impatient under its loss of power, the king summoned a parliament, that it might put him in possession of the estates of the late rebels, and enable him to raise money for the expences he had incurred to resist them. The parliament gratified him in both these wishes; and besides voting him two fifteenths

HIS ATTENTION TO LEGISLATION.

57

and tenths, it authorized him to levy a tax upon certain classes of aliens resident in England *. But Henry VII. was endowed with no common share of worldly wisdom; and he well understood, that to give his people wise laws was one of the cheapest and most effectual ways of attaching them to his government, and consequently of increasing its strength; and that to promote the general prosperity of his subjects, and to encourage the growth of commerce, was the surest way to fill his own treasury. In aiming at these ends, he had the benefit of the advice of two sagacious counsellors; Morton, whom his gratitude and respect for that prelate's understanding, had induced him to promote to the archbishopric_of Canterbury and chancellorship of England; and Richard Fox, whom he had just made bishop of Exeter. His first parliament, by voting that certain lucrative taxes should continue to be levied, without a fresh grant, as long as the king lived, enabled him to govern the country without calling parliaments, unless when some emergency made him need an extraordinary supply. But this tempted him, as the like proceeding had tempted Edward IV., to avoid summoning one, except on such occasions. And hence, towards the end of his reign, there were intervals of six and seven years between the dissolution of one house of Commons and the election of the next. Still, when he did find himself obliged to hold a parliament, he never allowed it to separate without enacting some laws, obviously intended to promote the public good. Thus the first measure which the king's ministers proposed to the parliament that met after the battle of Stoke, was a law for more effectually

* Five classes are specified in the act; and one of them is that of alien brewers. It has been generally said that the art of making beer was first brought into England, with the culture of hops, in the next reign. But it appears from this, and from another document mentioning bere by name, that some foreigners, probably Flemings, were already gaining a livelihood by supplying the English with what is now called our national beverage.

suppressing that constant source of violence and disorder, the custom of the great to give their badges, or liveries *, not only to their own household-servants, but to as many as would accept them for tokens, that they were thereby openly pledged to maintain each other, and the donor, in any riot or private quarrel, whatever the occasion might be. But former enactments for this purpose †, had frequently been rendered unavailing by the timidity or partiality of juries, composed of a powerful offender's neighbours; for which reason the new law authorized certain ministers of state, with one or two prelates, to call any person before them, and fine him for any breach of it, without going through the form of trial observed in a court of justice. This method of proceeding was not ill-suited to put down the obnoxious practice; but it gave the parliamentary sanction, and extended powers, to a court very subservient to the monarch, and holding its sittings so completely under his eye, that it took its name, the star-chamber, from the decorations of that apartment of his palace, in which it ordinarily met. Such a court would, turally, be suspected by the subjects; and the authority, thus given to the Star-chamber, was gradually so abused, and became so unpopular, that it drove the nation to the most deperate measures to procure its suppression. The wisest politicians are unable to devise any considerable change in the law, without some risk of thus introducing an unforseen evil, of full as great importance as that they wished to remedy; and considering how little experience the most observant statesmen then had of the practical effects of legislation, and how little acquaintance with

na

* The giving a livery did not then mean giving a whole suit of clothes. It was frequently no more than a scarf, or top-knot, that was given. Sometimes, however, it meant giving a tenant permission to wear an outer garment of the chief colour in his lord's arms; but, in this case, the wearer provided it at his own cost.

Vol. II. p. 391.