A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he sat

  himself down between two great noblemen, and told the people that

  he began the new reign in that place, because the first duty of a

  sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to

  maintain justice. He then mounted his horse and rode back to the

  City, where he was received by the clergy and the crowd as if he

  really had a right to the throne, and really were a just man. The

  clergy and the crowd must have been rather ashamed of themselves in

  secret, I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves.

  The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a great deal of

  show and noise, which the people liked very much; and then the King

  set forth on a royal progress through his dominions. He was

  crowned a second time at York, in order that the people might have

  show and noise enough; and wherever he went was received with

  shouts of rejoicing - from a good many people of strong lungs, who

  were paid to strain their throats in crying, 'God save King

  Richard!' The plan was so successful that I am told it has been

  imitated since, by other usurpers, in other progresses through

  other dominions.

  While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a week at

  Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instructions home for one of the

  wickedest murders that ever was done - the murder of the two young

  princes, his nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of London.

  Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the Tower. To

  him, by the hands of a messenger named JOHN GREEN, did King Richard

  send a letter, ordering him by some means to put the two young

  princes to death. But Sir Robert - I hope because he had children

  of his own, and loved them - sent John Green back again, riding and

  spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer that he could not

  do so horrible a piece of work. The King, having frowningly

  considered a little, called to him SIR JAMES TYRREL, his master of

  the horse, and to him gave authority to take command of the Tower,

  whenever he would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the keys

  of the Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing what

  was wanted, looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and chose

  JOHN DIGHTON, one of his own grooms, and MILES FOREST, who was a

  murderer by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he went,

  upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his authority from the

  King, took the command for four-and-twenty hours, and obtained

  possession of the keys. And when the black night came he went

  creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the dark,

  stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he

  came to the door of the room where the two young princes, having

  said their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each other's arms.

  And while he watched and listened at the door, he sent in those

  evil demons, John Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the two

  princes with the bed and pillows, and carried their bodies down the

  stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones at the

  staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave up the command of

  the Tower, and restored the keys, and hurried away without once

  looking behind him; and Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and

  sadness to the princes' room, and found the princes gone for ever.

  You know, through all this history, how true it is that traitors

  are never true, and you will not be surprised to learn that the

  Duke of Buckingham soon turned against King Richard, and joined a

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  great conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to place the

  crown upon its rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep

  the murder secret; but when he heard through his spies that this

  conspiracy existed, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in

  secret to the healths of the two young princes in the Tower, he

  made it known that they were dead. The conspirators, though

  thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to set up for the crown

  against the murderous Richard, HENRY Earl of Richmond, grandson of

  Catherine: that widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor.

  And as Henry was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that he

  should marry the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the

  late King, now the heiress of the house of York, and thus by

  uniting the rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red

  and White Roses. All being settled, a time was appointed for Henry

  to come over from Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard

  to take place in several parts of England at the same hour. On a

  certain day, therefore, in October, the revolt took place; but

  unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry was driven back at sea

  by a storm, his followers in England were dispersed, and the Duke

  of Buckingham was taken, and at once beheaded in the market-place

  at Salisbury.

  The time of his success was a good time, Richard thought, for

  summoning a Parliament and getting some money. So, a Parliament

  was called, and it flattered and fawned upon him as much as he

  could possibly desire, and declared him to be the rightful King of

  England, and his only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the

  next heir to the throne.

  Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it would,

  the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as the heiress of

  the house of York; and having accurate information besides, of its

  being designed by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of

  Richmond, he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken

  them, to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his son. With

  this view he went to the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late

  King's widow and her daughter still were, and besought them to come

  to Court: where (he swore by anything and everything) they should

  be safely and honourably entertained. They came, accordingly, but

  had scarcely been at Court a month when his son died suddenly - or

  was poisoned - and his plan was crushed to pieces.

  In this extremity, King Richard, always active, thought, 'I must

  make another plan.' And he made the plan of marrying the Princess

  Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece. There was one

  difficulty in the way: his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But,

  he knew (remembering his nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and

  he made love to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt

  perfectly confident that the Queen would die in February. The

  Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady, for, instead of

  rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred, she

  openly declared she loved him dearly; and, when February came and

  the Queen did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she

  was too long about it. However, King Richard was not so far out in

  his prediction, but, that she died in March - he took good care of

  that - and then this precious pair hoped to be married. But they<
br />
  were disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so unpopular

  in the country, that the King's chief counsellors, RATCLIFFE and

  CATESBY, would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King

  was even obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of

  such a thing.

  He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of his

  subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's side; he dared

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  not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should be denounced

  there; and for want of money, he was obliged to get Benevolences

  from the citizens, which exasperated them all against him. It was

  said too, that, being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed

  frightful dreams, and started up in the night-time, wild with

  terror and remorse. Active to the last, through all this, he

  issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond and all his

  followers, when he heard that they were coming against him with a

  Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and savage as a

  wild boar - the animal represented on his shield.

  Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven,

  and came on against King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with

  an army twice as great, through North Wales. On Bosworth Field the

  two armies met; and Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, and

  seeing them crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned him,

  turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son

  (whom he had tried hard to retain) among them. But, he was as

  brave as he was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight.

  He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in all

  directions, when he observed the Earl of Northumberland - one of

  his few great allies - to stand inactive, and the main body of his

  troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance

  caught Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights.

  Riding hard at him, and crying 'Treason!' he killed his standardbearer,

  fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed a powerful

  stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley

  parried it as it fell, and before Richard could raise his arm

  again, he was borne down in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and

  killed. Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised and

  trampled, and stained with blood, and put it upon Richmond's head,

  amid loud and rejoicing cries of 'Long live King Henry!'

  That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at

  Leicester; across whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a

  naked body brought there for burial. It was the body of the last

  of the Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper and

  murderer, slain at the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirtysecond

  year of his age, after a reign of two years.

  CHAPTER XXVI - ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH

  KING HENRY THE SEVENTH did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as

  the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their

  deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and

  calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He possessed

  considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to have been that

  he was not cruel when there was nothing to be got by it.

  The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused his cause

  that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The first thing he

  did, was, to direct her to be removed from the castle of Sheriff

  Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had placed her, and restored to

  the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick,

  Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had

  been kept a prisoner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her.

  This boy, who was now fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for

  safety. Then he came to London in great state, and gratified the

  people with a fine procession; on which kind of show he often very

  much relied for keeping them in good humour. The sports and feasts

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  which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the

  Sweating Sickness; of which great numbers of people died. Lord

  Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most from it;

  whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves,

  or because they were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances

  in the City (as they have been since), I don't know.

  The King's coronation was postponed on account of the general illhealth,

  and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as if he were not

  very anxious that it should take place: and, even after that,

  deferred the Queen's coronation so long that he gave offence to the

  York party. However, he set these things right in the end, by

  hanging some men and seizing on the rich possessions of others; by

  granting more popular pardons to the followers of the late King

  than could, at first, be got from him; and, by employing about his

  Court, some very scrupulous persons who had been employed in the

  previous reign.

  As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious

  impostures which have become famous in history, we will make those

  two stories its principal feature.

  There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for a

  pupil a handsome boy named Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker.

  Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and partly to carry out

  the designs of a secret party formed against the King, this priest

  declared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl

  of Warwick; who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked

  up in the Tower of London. The priest and the boy went over to

  Ireland; and, at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the

  people: who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly

  irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared

  that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented; and the

  boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things

  of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal

  Family, that they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and

  drinking his health, and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty

  demonstrations, to express their belief in him. Nor was this

  feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the Earl of Lincoln - whom

  the late usurper had named as his successor - went over to the

  young Pretender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with

  the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy - the sister of Edward the Fourth,

  who detested the present King and all his race - sailed to Dublin

  with two thousand German soldiers of her providing. In this

  promising state of the boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a

  crown taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary; and was

  then, according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home on

  the shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more

  strength than sense. Father Sim
ons, you may be sure, was mighty

  busy at the coronation.

  Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest,

  and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to

  invade England. The King, who had good intelligence of their

  movements, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers

  resorted to him every day; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but

  very few. With his small force he tried to make for the town of

  Newark; but the King's army getting between him and that place, he

  had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the

  complete destruction of the Pretender's forces, one half of whom

  were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The priest and the

  baker's boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the

  trick, was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died - suddenly

  perhaps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen and made a

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  turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one of the

  King's falconers; and so ended this strange imposition.

  There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen - always a

  restless and busy woman - had had some share in tutoring the

  baker's son. The King was very angry with her, whether or no. He

  seized upon her property, and shut her up in a convent at

  Bermondsey.

  One might suppose that the end of this story would have put the

  Irish people on their guard; but they were quite ready to receive a

  second impostor, as they had received the first, and that same

  troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity.

  All of a sudden there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from

  Portugal, a young man of excellent abilities, of very handsome

  appearance and most winning manners, who declared himself to be

  Richard, Duke of York, the second son of King Edward the Fourth.

  'O,' said some, even of those ready Irish believers, 'but surely

  that young Prince was murdered by his uncle in the Tower!' - 'It IS

  supposed so,' said the engaging young man; 'and my brother WAS

  killed in that gloomy prison; but I escaped - it don't matter how,

  at present - and have been wandering about the world for seven long

  years.' This explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of

  the Irish people, they began again to shout and to hurrah, and to