"with thoughts highly raised by hopes and expectations;" yet, if he had been of a different temper, it seems probable that, at a moment when Henry's suspicions and jealousies were so much excited, self-preservation might have induced him to fly, if not to embark in some desperate project. Immediately after the private sitting of the council at Richmond, Lincoln disappeared, and it was not known for some time whither he had betaken himself. We have seen that the Irish lords had sent emissaries into Flanders. The high personage to whom they addressed themselves was the dowagerduchess of Burgundy, the widow of Charles the Rash, and sister to Edward IV. and Richard, who lived in good state in the Netherlands, having sovereign authority in the district which her husband had left as her dower. The duchess, besides, had acquired great love and authority among the people of the Low Countries generally, by her virtues and popular manners, and by the tenderness she showed to Philip and Margaret, the children of Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of her husband, Duke Charles, by a former marriage. Good and amiable as she was in other respects, this princess hated King Henry and all his race with a most enduring and implacable hatred; and she persevered in a most extraordinary manner in impeding his path with difficulties and dangers. Bacon says, rather ungallantly, that she had "the spirit of a man, and the malice of a woman;" and that, “abounding in treasure by the greatness of her dower and her provident government, and being childless and without any nearer care, she made it her design and enterprise to see the majesty royal of England once again replaced in her house, and had set up King Henry as a mark at whose overthrow all her actions should aim and shoot." It was to her that Lovel had fled on the failure of the insurrection in Yorkshire; and it was to her that her nephew, the Earl of Lincoln, now repaired. The duchess presently got together a body of two thousand Germans, being choice and veteran bands, under the command of Martin Swart, a valiant and experienced captain. With these foreign mercenaries, the Earl of Lincoln, the Lord Lovel, and some other English exiles embarked for Ireland. In the month of May, a few days after their landing, the Earl of Warwick, of that side of the water, was crowned in the cathedral church of Dublin in the most solemn fashion, the Bishop of Meath performing the ceremony. As there was no royal crown at hand, they took a golden diadem from a statue of the Virgin Mary, which answered the purpose very well; and when the boy was well crowned and anointed, he was carried, after the manner of the Irish, from the church to the castle, on the shoulders of a very tall chieftain named Darcy. All this was done without any show of opposition, there being not a single sword drawn for King Henry, and, indeed, no displeasure testified in Ireland, except in the city of Waterford and among the people of the Butlers, who were old Lancastrians and hereditary

VOL. II.

enemies of the Earl of Kildare, the lord keeper.* Edward VI., as the new king was styled, issued writs, convoked a parliament, and caused penalties to be enacted against the Butlers and the citizens of Waterford. of Waterford. It appears that some of the principal actors in this astonishing drama thought it would be best to establish themselves first in Ireland, to make that country the seat of the war, and to draw thither King Henry in person, whose absence it was calculated (not without a knowledge of causes) would excite great alterations and commotions in England; but that this plan was defeated by the poverty of the country, by want of the means of paying the German mercenaries, and by the eagerness of the goldiery and the poorer Irish to make their fortunes in the invasion of England. It was, therefore, concluded that with all possible speed Edward VI. and his faithful army should cross St. George's Channel.

Henry, meanwhile, levied troops in different parts of the kingdom, put on a smiling, yet at the same time a devout, face, and, with great policy, resorted to the best means for disconcerting the plots hatching in England, and for securing the good will of the people. Shortly after the sudden flight of Lincoln, he travelled leisurely through Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, in which counties the young earl's influence was high. He was courteous to all the gentry, many of whom held themselves ready to do him service.† From Bury St. Edmund's he went to Norwich, and, to captivate the populace, he went from Norwich "in manner of a pilgrimage" to Walsingham, where he visited our Lady's Church, famous for miracles, and made his prayers and vows for help and deliverance. He then proceeded by way of Northampton and Coventry, to Kenilworth Castle, within the strong walls of which he had placed his mother, his wife, and his infant son, Prince Arthur. While he lay at Kenilworth, the king, from Ireland, landed at the pile of Foudray, in the southern extremity of Furness. Immediately on their landing, the Earl of Lincoln and the Lord Lovel were joined by their sworn friend Sir Thomas Broughton, whose estates lay in Lancashire, and whose tenants were ready armed. From the coast they advanced boldly towards York, expecting to be joined on

Three or four of the bishops, however, kept aloof.

† We learn, from one of the Paston letters, dated in the month of May, that the king and his lieutenant, the Earl of Oxford, were right well content at the conduct of the Norfolk gentry. "Howbeit," says the Earl of Oxford, the writer of the letter," his highness will not as yet put you to any further labour or charge for so much as his rebels and enemies be into Ireland; nevertheless his grace will that the country be ready at all times to do his highness service upon reasonable warning, for so much as the king's grace intendeth to make provision to send an army into Ireland in haste, not knowing as yet whether that ye, and other about you, shall be desired to bear any charge thereto or no." We also learn, from the same invaluable collection, that Lord Lovel's wife had remained in England, and that the court was jealous of such as held communications with her. The Pastons were not more steady in their politics than the majority of their cotemporaries: they had changed sides more than once already, and now Sir John seems to have been suspected of favouring the Lord Lovel. Sir Edmund Bedingfield, who was in high favour at court, writes thus to his loving cousin John, on the 16th of May, "Furthermore, cousin, it is said, that after my lord (Oxford) departing to the king ye were at Barkway, which is construed that ye had been with the Lady Lovel, but wrath said never well; and inasmuch as we understand my lord's pleasure, it is we done we deal wisely hereafter."

2 P

affections of the people. Elizabeth, the rightful heir, was kept in obscurity; she had been his wife a year and a half, and had borne him a son, and still she was not crowned. Now, however, he was "willing to give some contentment of that kind, at least in ceremony." From Warwick he sent instructions to prepare for a splendid coronation; and when all things were ready, and the parliament was sitting, Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster on the 20th of November,-Henry witnessing the whole ceremony, and the feast which followed, from behind a screen or lattice

that concealed his person.

business of the parliament when it met was to vote supplies and a bill of attainder, which, on slight evidence, included a great number of persons said to have been concerned in the late insurrection. It appears that no names were inserted except of persons who had property to forfeit.

During this summer Henry sent Fox, now Bishop of Durham, on an embassy into Scotland, being still prudently anxious to preserve peace with that country. The expert churchman conducted the mission with great success. James was already well disposed to continue to live in peace with his neighbours. He turned aside from the flattering picture of conquest or spoil, presented to him by some of his warlike nobles, who thought it folly to miss the opportunity offered by the factious state of England; and he listened to proposals for a new and enlarged treaty of marriage. "But the King of Scotland, labouring under the same disease that King Henry didthat is, discontented subjects apt to rise"-could do little more than prolong the truce; and in the course of the following year a tragical death broke all his treaties and plans.

Bacon compares

the ceremony to "an old christening that had staid long for godfathers." He adds, that owing to the strange and unusual delay, all men saw that the king had merely complied out of necessity and reason of state. He liberated the Marquess of Dorset from the Tower, but it appears that he still left Elizabeth Woodville, that nobleman's mother, and the mother of his queen, in the hands of the monks of Bermondsey. The chief A curious account of the coronation is given by Ives.-See Se lect Papers,' &c.

Ever since his accession Henry had been occupied exclusively in settling his affairs at home; but now, complicated intrigues and great political movements forced him to look abroad. The aspect of affairs in France, even before these demonstrations, was sufficiently alarming: the dissevered parts of that country were gradually uniting into a consistent whole, and forming a great and compact kingdom, while the much narrower extent of Britain was still divided into two rival kingdoms frequently at war with one another. The rapid growth of the French power threatened to cast a dangerous shadow over all the neighbouring countries; and, both according to the principles of common policy, which seeks to check the too rapid aggrandisement of a rival, and to the juster and nobler policy which opposes itself to the conquest of small and weak states by strong ones, Henry seemed bound to take an active part in the affairs of the continent, where the losing party constantly addressed themselves to the warlike spirit and power and magnanimity of the English nation. But Henry was no warrior, and his avidity for money, his juggling and double-dealing, prevented

him from taking up the honourable position of an arbiter and peace-maker; for, with the means he had in his hands, he might have curbed the ambition of France without any war. At the time of the death of Louis XI., which happened on the 30th of August, 1483, about two months after the accession of Richard III., by craft and policy, by fortunate marriages, and by the sword, the French monarchy had swallowed up all the independent principalities, except Brittany, which still preserved its duke and its comparatively free institutions. Charles VIII., the son of Louis, was only fourteen years of age when he ascended the throne of France; and, according to arrangements made by his father, he was placed for a fixed time under the tutelage of Madame Anne, his elder sister, who had married Peter of Bourbon, Lord of Beaujeu. What followed was according to precedent-the Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis XII.), who hated Bourbon and his wife, flew to arms; but Orleans was unsuccessful and driven to seek refuge in Brittany.* Duke Francis II. had always been a weak prince, and he was now growing old and infirm. His guest, notwithstanding he was already married to one of the daughters of Louis XI., conceived the idea of obtaining possession of the duchy by marrying Anne of Brittany, the elder daughter and heiress of Francis; and a party among the turbulent Breton nobles entered into his views. the same time there was another faction that favoured the French court, and another that inclined to an alliance with England. The country was ravaged by a civil war, the most painful event of which, to the Duke Francis, was his being obliged, by a temporary union of two of the parties, and by the clamour of the people, to deliver up his minister and favourite Landois (the old acquaintance of King Henry), who, being accused of a variety of crimes, among which sorcery was not forgotten, was tortured into a confession of crimes which he had really committed, was sentenced by six commissaries, who tried him under the of the Duke of Orange, his mortal enemy, to be hanged as a traitor, and was hanged accordingly in spite of the solemn promises of the confederates to the duke that his life should be safe. Encouraged by the prevailing disorders, the French regency precociously betrayed their design of seizing the duchy upon the ground of some inexplicable right. Duke Francis thereupon summoned the three estates of the duchy, who took a most solemn oath of allegiance to the Princess Anne, and, in case of her dying without issue, to her younger sister Madame Isabeau. This act fixed the eyes of several princes upon the heiress of Brittany, and, besides the Duke of Orleans, who had many formidable difficulties

At