Comic History of England by Bill Nye (books to read now txt) 📕

the nuns of Leicester in their chapel, Richmond then succeeding him as king. He was buried in the usual manner, and a large amount of obloquy heaped on him.

That is one advantage of being great. After one's grave is filled up, one can have a large three-cornered chunk of obloquy put on the top of it to mark the spot and keep medical students away of nights.

Greatness certainly has its drawbacks, as the Duchess of Bloomer once said to the author, after she had been sitting on a dry-goods box with a nail in it, and had, therefore, called forth adverse criticism. An unknown man might have sat on that same dry-goods box and hung on the same nail till he was black in the face without causing remarks, but with the Duchess of Bloomer it was different,—oh, so different!

[Illustration: TOMB OF RICHARD III.]

CHAPTER XVIII. DISORDER STILL THE POPULAR FAD: GENERAL ADMIXTURE OF PRETENDERS, RELIGION, POLITICS, AND DISGRUNTLED MONARCHS.

As a result of the Bosworth victory, Henry Tudor obtained the use of the throne from 1485 to 1509. He saw at once by means of an eagle eye that with the house of York so popular among his people, nothing but a firm hand and eternal vigilance could maintain his sovereignty. He kept the young Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence, carefully indoors with massive iron gewgaws attached to his legs, thus teaching him to be backward about mingling in the false joys of society.

Henry Tudor is known to history as Henry VII., and caused some adverse criticism by delaying his nuptials with the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV.

A pleasing practical joke at this time came near plunging the country into a bloody war. A rumor having gone forth that the Earl of Warwick had escaped from the Tower, a priest named Simon instructed a good-looking young man-about-town named Lambert Simnel to play the part, landed him in Ireland, and proceeded to call for troops. Strange to say, in those days almost any pretender with courage stood a good chance of winning renown or a hospitable grave in this way. But Lambert was not made of the material generally used in the construction of great men, and, though he secured quite an army, and the aid of the Earl of Lincoln and many veteran troops, the first battle closed the comedy, and the bogus sovereign, too contemptible even to occupy the valuable time of the hangman, became a scullion in the royal kitchen, while Simon was imprisoned.

[Illustration: SIMON, A PRIEST OF OXFORD, TAKES LAMBERT THE PRETENDER TO
IRELAND.]

For five years things were again dull, but at the end of that period an understudy for Richard, Duke of York, arose and made pretensions. His name was Perkin Warbeck, and though the son of a Flemish merchant, he was a great favorite at social functions and straw rides. He went to Ireland, where anything in the way of a riot was even then hailed with delight, and soon the York family and others who cursed the reigning dynasty flocked to his standard.

France endorsed him temporarily until Charles became reconciled to Henry, and then he dropped Perkin like a heated potato. Perk, however, had been well entertained in Paris as the coming English king, and while there was not permitted to pay for a thing. He now visited the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., and made a hit at once. She gave him the title of The White Rose of England (1493), and he was pleased to find himself so popular when he might have been measuring molasses in the obscurity of his father's store.

Henry now felt quite mortified that he could not produce the evidence of the murder of the two sons of Edward IV., so as to settle this gay young pretender; but he did not succeed in finding the remains, though they were afterwards discovered under the staircase of the White Tower, and buried in Westminster Abbey, where the floor is now paved with epitaphs, and where economy and grief are better combined, perhaps, than elsewhere in the world, the floor and tombstone being happily united, thus, as it were, killing two birds with one stone.

But how sad it is to-day to contemplate the situation occupied by Henry, forced thus to rummage the kingdom for the dust of two murdered princes, that he might, by unearthing a most wicked crime, prevent the success of a young pretender, and yet fearing to do so lest he might call the attention of the police to the royal record of homicide, regicide, fratricide, and germicide!

Most cruel of all this sad history, perhaps, was the execution of Stanley, the king's best friend in the past, who had saved his life in battle and crowned him at Bosworth. In an unguarded moment he had said that were he sure the young man was as he claimed, King Edward's son, he—Stanley—would not fight against him. For this purely unpartisan remark he yielded up his noble life in 1495.

Warbeck for some time went about trying to organize cheap insurrections, with poor success until he reached Scotland, where James IV. endorsed him, and told him to have his luggage sent up to the castle. James also presented his sister Catherine as a spouse to the giddy young scion of the Flemish calico counter. James also assisted Perkin, his new brother-in-law, in an invasion of England, which failed, after which the pretender gave himself up. He was hanged amid great applause at Tyburn, and the Earl of Warwick, with whom he had planned to escape, was beheaded at Tower Hill. Thus, in 1499, perished the last of the Plantagenets of the male kind.

Henry hated war, not because of its cruelty and horrors, but because it was expensive. He was one of the most parsimonious of kings, and often averted war in order to prevent the wear and tear on the cannon. He managed to acquire two million pounds sterling from the reluctant tax-payer, yet no monarch ever received such a universal consent when he desired to pass away. If any regret was felt anywhere, it was so deftly concealed that his death, to all appearance, gave general and complete satisfaction.

[Illustration: A RELUCTANT TAX-PAYER.]

After a reign of twenty-four years he was succeeded by his second son,
Henry, in 1509, the elder son, Arthur, having died previously.

It was during the reign of Henry VII. that John and Sebastian Cabot were fitted out and discovered North America in 1497, which paved the way for the subsequent depopulation of Africa, Italy, and Ireland. South America had been discovered the year before by Columbus. Henry VII. was also the father of the English navy.

The accession of Henry VIII. was now hailed with great rejoicing. He was but eighteen years of age, but handsome and smart. He soon married Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his brother Arthur. She was six years his senior, and he had been betrothed to her under duress at his eleventh year.

A very fine snap-shot reproduction of Henry VIII. and Catherine in holiday attire, from an old daguerreotype in the author's possession, will be found upon the following page.

[Illustration: HENRY VIII. AND CATHERINE.]

Henry VIII. ordered his father's old lawyers, Empson and Dudley, tried and executed for being too diligent in business. He sent an army to recover the lost English possessions in France, but in this was unsuccessful. He then determined to organize a larger force, and so he sent to Calais fifty thousand men, where they were joined by Maximilian. In the battle which soon followed with the French cavalry, they lost their habitual sang-froid and most of their hand-baggage in a wild and impetuous flight. It is still called the Battle of the Spurs. This was in 1513.

In the report of the engagement sent to the king, nothing was said of the German emperor for the reason, as was said by the commander, "that he does not desire notice, and, in fact, Maximilian objections to the use of his name." This remark still furnishes food for thought on rainy days at Balmoral, and makes the leaden hours go gayly by.

During the year 1513 the Scots invaded England under James, but though their numbers were superior, they were sadly defeated at Flodden Field, and when the battle was over their king and the flower of their nobility lay dead upon the scene.

[Illustration: WOLSEY OUTSHINES THE KING.]

Wolsey, who was made cardinal in 1515 by the Pope, held a tremendous influence over the young king, and indirectly ruled the country. He ostensibly presented a humble demeanor, but in his innermost soul he was the haughtiest human being that ever concealed beneath the cloak of humility an inflexible, tough, and durable heart.

On the death of Maximilian, Henry had some notion of preëmpting the vacant throne, but soon discovered that Charles V. of Spain had a prior lien to the same, and thus, in 1520, this new potentate became the greatest power in the civilized world. It is hard to believe in the nineteenth or twentieth century that Spain ever had any influence with anybody of sound mind, but such the veracious historian tells us was once the case.

Francis, the French king, was so grieved and mortified over the success of his Spanish rival that he turned to Henry for comfort, and at Calais the two disgruntled monarchs spent a fortnight jousting, tourneying, in-falling, out-falling, merry-making, swashbuckling, and general acute gastritis.

[Illustration: THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD.]

It was a magnificent meeting, however, Wolsey acting as costumer, and was called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." Large, portly men with whiskers wore purple velvet opera-cloaks trimmed with fur, and Gainsborough hats with ostrich feathers worth four pounds apiece (sterling). These corpulent warriors, who at Calais shortly before had run till overtaken by nervous prostration and general debility, now wore more millinery and breastpins and slashed velvet and satin facings and tinsel than the most successful and highly painted and decorated courtesans of that period.

The treaty here made with so much pyrotechnical display and éclat and hand-embroidery was soon broken, Charles having caught the ear of Wolsey with a promise of the papal throne upon the death of Leo X., which event he joyfully anticipated.

Henry, in 1521, scored a triumph and earned the title of Defender of the Faith by writing a defence of Catholicism in answer to an article written by Martin Luther attacking it. Leo died soon after, and, much to the chagrin of Wolsey, was succeeded by Adrian VI.

[Illustration: HENRY WRITES A TREATISE IN DEFENCE OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH.]

War was now waged with France by the new alliance of Spain and England; but success waited not upon the English arms, while, worse than all, the king was greatly embarrassed for want of more scudii. Nothing can be more pitiful, perhaps, than a shabby king waiting till all his retainers have gone away before he dare leave the throne, fearing that his threadbare retreat may not be protected. Henry tried to wring something from Parliament, but without success, even aided by that practical apostle of external piety and internal intrigue, Wolsey. The latter, too, had a second bitter disappointment in the election of Clement VII. to succeed Adrian, and as this was easily traced to the chicanery of the emperor, who had twice promised the portfolio of pontiff to Wolsey, the latter determined to work up another union between Henry and France in 1523.

War, however, continued for some time with Francis, till, in 1525, he was defeated and taken prisoner. This gave Henry a chance to figure with the queen regent, the mother of Francis, and a pleasant treaty was made in 1526. The Pope, too, having been captured by the emperor, Henry and Francis agreed to release and restore him or perish on the spot. Quite a well-written and beguiling account of this alliance, together with the Anne Boleyn affair, will be found in the succeeding chapter.

[Illustration: CHARLES II. CONCEALED IN THE "ROYAL OAK," WHILE HIS
PURSUERS PASSED UNDER HIM (1651).]

[Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL IN DISSOLVING PARLIAMENT SEIZED THE MACE,
EXCLAIMING, "TAKE AWAY THIS BAUBLE!" (1653).]

[Illustration: A BOOK ENTITLED "KILLING NO MURDER", BOLDLY ADVISING THE
REMOVAL OF THE USURPER, CAUSED CROMWELL CEASELESS ANXIETY (1658).]

[Illustration: HENRY VIII. PLUNDERING THE CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES OF
THEIR POSSESSIONS.]

[Illustration: AFTER THE DEATH OF JANE SEYMOUR, HENRY VIII. TURNED HIS
ATTENTION TO THE SELECTION OF A NEW QUEEN, DECIDING ON ANNE OF CLEVES, A
PROTESTANT PRINCESS WITH WHOSE PORTRAIT HE HAD BEEN HIGHLY PLEASED. THE
ORIGINAL SO GREATLY DISAPPOINTED HIM THAT HE SOON DIVORCED HER.]

[Illustration: EDWARD VI., SUCCESSOR TO HENRY VIII., AETAT. TEN YEARS,
WHOSE ATTENTION TO HIS STUDIES AND THE GENTLENESS OF