Bosworth Field is often treated as the last act of the Wars of the Roses. This is an error; they were protracted for twelve years after the accession of Henry VII., and did not really end till the time of Blackheath Field and the siege of Exeter (1497). The position of the first Tudor king is misconceived if his early years are regarded as a time of strong governance and well-established order. On the contrary he was in continual danger, and was striving with all the resources of a ready and untiring mind to rebuild foundations that were absolutely rotten. Phenomena like the Cornish revolt (which recalls Cade's insurrection) and the Yorkshire rising of 1489, which began with the death of the earl of Northumberland, show that at any moment whole counties might take arms in sheer lawlessness, or for some local grievance. Loyalty was such an uncertain thing that the king might call out great levies yet be forced to doubt whether they would fight for him--at Stoke Field it seems that a large part of Henry's army misbehaved, much as that of Richard III. had done at Bosworth. The demoralization brought about by the evil years between 1453 and 1483 could not be lived down in a day--any sort of treason was possible to the generation that had seen the career of Warwick and the usurpation of Gloucester. The survivors of that time were capable of taking arms for any cause that offered a chance of unreasonable profit, and no one's loyalty could be trusted. Did not Sir William Stanley, the best paid of those who betrayed Richard III., afterwards lose his head for a deliberate plot to betray Henry VII.? The various attempts that were made to overturn the new dynasty seem contemptible to the historian of the 20th century. They were not so contemptible at the time, because England and Ireland were full of adventurers who were ready to back any cause, and who looked on the king of the moment as no more than a successful member of their own class--a base-born Welshman who had been lucky enough to become the figurehead of the movement that had overturned an unpopular usurper. The organizing spirits of the early troubles of the reign of Henry VII. were irreconcilable Yorkists who had suffered by the change of dynasty; but their hopes of success rested less on their own strength than on the not ill-founded notion that England would tire of any ruler who had to raise taxes and reward his partisans. The position bore a curious resemblance to that of the early years of Henry IV., a king who, like Henry VII., had to vindicate a doubtful elective title to the throne by miracles of cunning and activity. The later representative of the house of Lancaster was fortunate, however, in having less formidable enemies than the earlier; the power of the baronage had been shaken by the Wars of the Roses no less than the power of the crown; so many old estates had passed rapidly from hand to hand, so many old titles were represented by upstarts