Then the wary King, by making a treaty of commerce with the Flemings,
drove Perkin Warbeck out of that country; and, by completely gaining
over the Irish to his side, deprived him of that asylum too. He
wandered away to Scotland, and told his story at that Court. King James
the Fourth of Scotland, who was no friend to King Henry, and had no
reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his Scotch lords to betray him
more than once; but had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a great
reception, called him his cousin, and gave him in marriage the Lady
Catherine Gordon, a beautiful and charming creature related to the
royal house of Stuart.
Alarmed by this successful reappearance of the Pretender, the King
still undermined, and bought, and bribed, and kept his doings and
Perkin Warbeck’s story in the dark, when he might, one would imagine,
have rendered the matter clear to all England. But, for all this
bribing of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King’s Court, he could not
procure the Pretender to be delivered up to him. James, though not very
particular in many respects, would not betray him; and the ever-busy
Duchess of Burgundy so provided him with arms, and good soldiers, and
with money besides, that he had soon a little army of fifteen hundred
men of various nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish King in
person, he crossed the border into England, and made a proclamation to
the people, in which he called the King ‘Henry Tudor;’ offered large
rewards to any who should take or distress him; and announced himself
as King Richard the Fourth come to receive the homage of his faithful
subjects. His faithful subjects, however, cared nothing for him, and
hated his faithful troops: who, being of different nations, quarrelled
also among themselves. Worse than this, if worse were possible, they
began to plunder the country; upon which the White Rose said, that he
would rather lose his rights, than gain them through the miseries of
the English people. The Scottish King made a jest of his scruples; but
they and their whole force went back again without fighting a battle.
The worst consequence of this attempt was, that a rising took place
among the people of Cornwall, who considered themselves too heavily
taxed to meet the charges of the expected war. Stimulated by Flammock,
a lawyer, and Joseph, a blacksmith, and joined by Lord Audley and some
other country gentlemen, they marched on all the way to Deptford
Bridge, where they fought a battle with the King’s army. They were
defeated—though the Cornish men fought with great bravery—and the lord
was beheaded, and the lawyer and the blacksmith were hanged, drawn, and
quartered. The rest were pardoned. The King, who believed every man to
be as avaricious as himself, and thought that money could settle
anything, allowed them to make bargains for their liberty with the
soldiers who had taken them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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