After the defeat of his cause, Lambert and the priest who had done the
mischief were taken. The priest was consigned to an ecclesiastical
prison for the rest of his natural life; the boy was pardoned—they
could not execute a child—and contemptuously thrust into the King’s
kitchen as a little scullion. He afterwards rose to be one of the
King’s falconers—the only example in history of a Pretender turning
out an honest man in the end. Can we not see the people about the
Court gazing curiously upon the handsome scullion in his white jacket,
white cap, and white shoes, going to and fro upon his duties, washing
pans with zeal and scraping trenchers? The boy had a lovely face, and
manners very far beyond his station. Can we not hear them whispering
that this young man had once been as good as King, and knew what it was
to exercise royal authority?
The Earl of Warwick was still, however, allowed to live.
The King, who was magnanimous when it was politic, could also exhibit
the opposite quality on occasion. He had never found it easy to forgive
Edward’s Queen for submitting herself and her daughters to Richard
after she had consented to Henry’s attempt upon the Crown, on the
condition of his marrying the eldest. He laid the matter before his
Council, who determined that Elizabeth, late Queen, should forfeit all
her lands and possessions, and should continue for the rest of her life
in honourable confinement in the Abbey of Bermondsey. Here, in fact,
she died, not long afterwards, the second Queen who breathed her last
in that House.
One Pretender removed, another arose. Perkin Warbeck professed, as we
know, to be the younger son of Edward IV., namely, Richard, Duke of
York, who, it was pretended, had escaped from the Tower. The strange
adventures of Perkin are told in every history of England. He is
connected with that of London on three occasions. The first was after
his abortive attempt to land in Kent. The Kentish men, refusing to join
him, attacked his followers, drove some of them back to their ships,
and took prisoners a hundred and sixty men with four Captains. These
prisoners were all brought to London roped together, a curious sight
to see. Those who lived on London Bridge saw many strange sights, but
seldom anything more strange than these poor prisoners, who were not
Englishmen but aliens, thus tied together. They were all hanged, every
one: some on the seashore, where their bodies might warn other aliens
not to come filibustering into England; and the rest at Tyburn.
[Illustration: PERKIN WARBECK (1474–1499)
From a drawing in the Municipal Library, Arras.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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