Bosworth, and had been appointed his chamberlain, was condemned and executed,—a monument of the mutability of honour, and of the insecurity of favour in times of political distraction. Perkin escaped a snare laid for him by troops assembled by gentlemen of Kent, but some of those who followed him on the occasion were either killed outright, or tried and put to death. He himself escaped to Flanders, but, leaving that country, came over to Ireland, and thereafter to Scotland, where he was entertained by James IV., and received in marriage a daughter of the earl of Huntly. An aggression, on the part of James, upon the English frontier, in which he was accompanied by Warbeck, was followed by an insurrection in Cornwall, occasioned by Henry's attempt to raise the tribute for the Scottish war. The English insurrection was soon subdued, and the captives were set free; a truce too was formed between Henry and the king of Scotland. But Perkin having been dismissed from that country, betook himself to the south of England, where he was followed by a multitude of the populace, and assumed the title of Richard IV. Military preparations were resorted to on the part of the king; Warbeck's followers submitted, and in general were leniently treated. To Catherine Gordon, the noble lady whom Warbeck had married, the king behaved with liberality. Perkin himself was soon afterwards brought to execution, with the young earl of Warwick, the last of the Plantagenets. The execution of Warbeck may have been blameless,-respecting that of Warwick we quote the words of Hume :-"This violent act of tyranny, the great blemish of Henry's reign, by which he destroyed the last remaining male of the line of Plantagenet, begat great discontent among the people who saw an unhappy prince, that had long been denied all the privileges of his high birth, even cut off from the common benefits of nature, now at last deprived of life itself, merely for attempting to shake off that oppression under which he laboured."

In November 1501, Prince Arthur was married to Catharine, daughter of Ferdinand of Arragon. A few months after this marriage, Arthur died; but Henry, the king's second son, afterwards Henry VIII. was forthwith espoused to the widow of his brother, a measure for which a papal dispensation was obtained. About the same time, Margaret, the king's elder daughter, was married to James, king of Scotland. Elizabeth, Henry's queen, died in February 1503. But neither prosperous nor adverse circumstances seem to have rooted out the avarice of the king. At the beginning of his reign, he had taken as confidential counsellors, two clergymen, Morton and Fox, both of whom were raised to bishoprics. These individuals are said to have kept in check this ruling passion of the king. But we now find him using the aid of two infamous ministers, Empson and Dudley, in supplying his coffers by the oppression of his subjects,-men who appear to have wanted alike the generosity of freemen, and the ordinary sympathies of nature. Under the heavy exactions enforced by their illegal or legalized barbarity, fines and forfeitures supplied the treasury of Henry, who is said to have been in possession, before his death, of the enormous sum of £1,800,000. In the course of the year 1506, Henry committed to the Tower the earl of Suffolk, nephew of Edward IV. having previously induced Philip of Castile to yield him up into his hands. There is recorded a conversation between these two princes on the subject, to the following

effect. On Henry objecting to the favour which Suffolk-who had engaged in certain unfortunate intrigues-had met with in the dominions of the Castilian king, that prince replied that he supposed the English king had been above being apprehensive of so unimportant a personage as the earl, but promised to banish him from his kingdom. This, however, did not satisfy the jealous mind of Henry,—jealous the more, perhaps, from the consciousness of the attempts which had been made, on his own behalf, against the usurpation of Richard III. He desired of Philip that Suffolk might be delivered into his hands. Philip objected that compliance with this proposal would bring dishonour both on Henry and himself, and produce an impression that the one had treated the other as a prisoner. “I,” said the king, "will take that dishonour on myself, and so your honour is saved." About the same time Henry formed a treaty with Philip favourable to the commerce of England with Castile, and soon thereafter, betrothed his daughter Mary to the archduke Charles, the son of the Castilian king.

In justice to the English monarch it must be said, that, in the course of his reign, he showed a regard to the interests of maritime discovery and trade. Though contrary to a rule recommended by Montesquieu, that kings should not be merchants, he seems to have himself engaged in commercial enterprise. His celebrated vessel, the Great Harry, is represented as costing fourteen thousand pounds. He invited Columbus to England, when that illustrious navigator had failed of obtaining support from the courts of Spain and Portugal in his proposed adventure; and, although he lost the honour of that discoverer's success, he sent out Sebastian Cabot on a similar voyage. The commercial laws passed in this reign by parliament, however, were, according to the views of the time, restrictive of perfect freedom in foreign trade. Of the interference on the part of the king and parliament-not very impolitic, perhaps with another department of the social customs of the commonwealth, the extent of the retinue in a nobleman's establishment, there is recorded the following rather lively anecdote. On occasion of a visit which Henry paid to his favourite the earl of Oxford, the retainers of that nobleman were drawn up in two lines, and presented a magnificent appearance. The king exalted the earl's hospitality, suggesting, that the gentlemen and yeomen who appeared before him were, of course, menials of his noble host. Oxford replied that most of them were his retainers, who had come on this occasion to do him service. By my faith," exclaimed his majesty, "I thank you for your good cheer, but I must not allow my laws to be broken in my sight! My attorney must speak with you." The earl is said to have been fined accordingly.

66

It seems unlikely that the court of Henry would be maintained on his part, with any extraordinary splendour. In tilts and tournaments, however those stern amusements of the age-the king himself took part. Prompted, probably, rather by respect for the Romish church or deference to the papal see, than by religious or romantic ardour, he expressed an interest in a crusade to Palestine in which Pope Alexander VI. exhorted him to join. But his negotiation with the papal nuncio on the subject is marked by the cautious and calculating spirit of the king.

At last, declining health brought him near the termination of his powerful but oppressive reign. His conscience was troubled by the re

collection of the rapacity which he had countenanced, and his will directed restitution to be made to such as had suffered injury at his hands. He died at Richmond, 22d April, 1509, in the 52d year of his age, and 24th of his reign. His successor, Henry VIII. committed to Pietro Torregiano-a Florentine sculptor, who came to assist in the building of that celebrated edifice, begun by the late king, Henry Seventh's chapel,' the erection within its walls, of a tomb to his father's memory, which, if worthy of the riches which that monarch had amassed, and of the sceptre which he had wielded, may be viewed as also splendidly attesting the insufficiency of both.

Edward Plantagenet

DIED A. D. 1499.

THE melancholy fortunes and fate of this prince form one of the gloomiest pages in English history. After the execution of his father, the duke of Clarence, Edward IV. had created him earl of Warwick. Even Richard, after the death of his own son, had treated him for a time as the heir-apparent, but afterwards, fearing that he might ultimately prove a dangerous competitor, had confined him in the castle of Sheriffhutton, in Yorkshire. The first act of Henry VII. was to transfer the young prince, who had only reached his 15th year, from his prison in the north to the tower of London, a place of greater security for so formidable a personage as the heir to the crown according to the principles of the house of York. The people commiserated the hard lot of the innocent youth, and readily listened to the assurances of an impostor, Ralph Wulford, that the earl of Warwick had escaped from his dismal prison, and was about to re-appear in public and vindicate his injured rights. The committal of Warbeck to the tower precipitated the fate of the last of the Plantagenets. Whether from accident or design, the two prisoners were permitted to see and converse with each other, and concert a plan for their escape. Four of the warders were induced, by liberal promises, to connive at the escape of both prisoners. According to the records of their trial, it was arranged that Warbeck was to be again proclaimed by the title of Richard ÏV., and Warwick was to summon the retainers of his father to the standard of the new king. On the 21st of November, 1499, two days after the execution of the pretender, the earl of Warwick was brought to trial for treason. Of his own accord he pleaded guilty before a jury of peers, and received sentence of death from the earl of Oxford, as lord-highsteward, which was carried into execution a few days afterwards. Thus perished the last male of the Plantagenets, who had reigned over England for nearly four hundred years. The public voice, as we have already hinted, loudly reprobated Henry's injustice and inhumanity. For Warwick, confined, as he had ever been, without any legal warrant, was undoubtedly justified in attempting to recover his liberty; and, had he been even guilty of treason, his situation was such as ought to have saved him from punishment. Fifteen years of lonely imprisonment had effectually blighted his moral being. "He was," says one historian, "a very innocent." Another contemporary writer says of him,

1 Holinshed.

"2

"The ex

"Being kept for fifteen years, without company of men, or sight of beasts, he could not discern a goose from a capon." But there was more than unjustifiable murder in the deed, foul as it was. tinction of such a harmless and joyless life," says Mackintosh, "in defiance of justice, and in the face of mankind, is a deed which should seem to be incapable of aggravation; but the motives of this merciless murder, the base interests to which the victim was sacrificed, and the horrible coolness of the two veteran tyrants who devised the crime, are aggravations perhaps without parallel. Henry had been for some time engaged in a negotiation for the marriage of Arthur, his eldest son, with Catherine, infanta of Spain. In the course of the personal correspondence between the two monarchs, these two kings understanding each other at half a word,-there were letters shown out of Spain, whereby, in the passages concerning the treaty of marriage, Ferdinand had written to Henry in plain terms, that he saw no assurance of the succession as long as the earl of Warwick lived, and that he was loath to send his daughter to troubles and dangers.”

Edmund Dudley.

BORN A. D. 1462.-DIED A. D. 1510.

THIS able, but infamous man, was the son of Sir John Dudley, and was born in 1462. He studied at Oxford, and afterwards removed to Gray's inn, where he attained to such distinguished professional eminence and general reputation that he was introduced to the king's privy council in his 23d year. In 1492, he was employed in negotiating for peace with France, and he was one of those who, in 1499, signed the ratification of a treaty with that country,-a circumstance which sufficiently indicates how well he stood in Henry's good graces at this time. The means by which the cunning lawyer courted the royal favour, were of a most disgraceful kind. It was by carefully noting and ministering to Henry's cupidity, that both Dudley and his companion in infamy, Empson, raised themselves to that pride of place from which they were doomed to be so suddenly precipitated at last. To gratify the royal passion, a system of extortion was employed, "which," says Bacon, "the people,-into whom there is infused, for the preservation of monarchies, a natural desire to discharge their princes, though it be with the unjust charge of their counsellors,-did impute unto Cardinal Morton, and Sir Reginald Bray, who, as it after appeared, as counsellors of ancient authority with him, did so second his humours, as nevertheless they did temper them, whereas, Empson and Dudley, that followed, being persons that had no reputation, with him, otherwise than by the servile following of his bent, did not give way only as the first did, but shaped his way to those extremities for which himself was touched with remorse at his death." 66 They were bold men," he adds, "and careless of fame, and that took toll for their master's grist. Dudley was of good family, eloquent, and one that could put hateful business into good language; but Empson, that was the son of a sieve-maker, triumphed always in the deed done, putting off all other respects whatsoever. These two persons, being lawyers in science, and

Hall.

privy counsellors in authority, turned law and justice into wormwood and rapine. For, first, their manner was to cause divers subjects to be indicted for sundry crimes, and so far forth to proceed in form of law; but, when the bills were found, then presently to commit them: and, nevertheless, not to produce them in any reasonable time to their answer, but to suffer them to languish long in prison, and, by sundry artificial devices and terrors, to extort from them great fines and ransoms, which they termed compositions and mitigations. Neither did they, towards the end, observe so much as the half face of justice, in proceeding by indictment, but sent forth their precepts to attack men, and convent them before themselves and some others, at their private houses, in a court of commission; and there used to shuffle up a summary proceeding, by examination, without trial of jury, assuming to themselves there to deal both in pleas of the crown and controversies civil. Then did they also use to enthral and charge the subjects' lands with tenures in capite, by finding false offices, and thereby to work upon them by wardships, liveries, premier seisins, and alienations, being the fruits of those tenures; refusing upon divers pretexts and delays, to admit men to traverse those false offices according to law. Nay, the king's wards, after they had accomplished their full age, could not be suffered to have livery of their lands, without paying excessive fines, far exceeding all reasonable rates. They did also vex men with informations of intrusion upon scarce colourable titles. When men were outlawed in personal actions, they would not permit them to purchase their charters of pardon, except they paid great and intolerable sums, standing upon the strict point of law, which, upon outlawries, giveth forfeiture of goods: nay, contrary to all law and colour, they maintained the king ought to have the half of men's lands and rents, during the space of full two years, for a pain, in case of outlawry. They would also niffle with jurors, and enforce them to find as they would direct; and, if they did not, convent them, imprison them, and fine them."

In the parliament held in 1504, Dudley was speaker of the house of commons. By Henry's will he was appointed along with sixteen others-amongst whom was his socius criminis Empson-one of the examiners who were to make inquisition into such matters as they in their conscience should limit Henry's will might stand charged with, and to make restoration and recompense to all aggrieved parties; these two personages were also named amongst Henry's executors, so that they must have contrived to retain their footing in Henry's esteem to the very last. But that monarch was scarcely in his grave, when both Dudley and Empson were sent to the tower, in order to appease the popular clamour against them. At first it was intended to bring them to trial only for "passing the bounds of their commission, and for stretching laws in themselves very severe;" but when it became evident that nothing short of a capital conviction would satisfy the nation at large in the case of two such notorious offenders, it was judged proper to indict them for a conspiracy, during the last illness of Henry, to seize on London with an armed force, and to assume the powers of government as soon as the king's decease was known. Of this conspiracy, Dudley was convicted at London, on the 16th of July 1509, and Empson, at Northampton, on the 1st of October. Stow informs us that the king was inclined to pardon them, and that a rumour prevailed, that Queen