Henry had at length found courage to commit the crime. He may have excused it to himself from the absolute necessity of his position. It had been perpetrated in profound secrecy. If the mother, brother, or sisters suspected anything, they could be silenced. They were absolutely at his mercy. Henry caused the mother to be stripped of her property, immured in Bermondsey nunnery, and left dependent on him for subsistence. She was thus effectually silenced. The Marquis of Dorset, half brother of the murdered boys, was committed to the Tower during 1487; but he succeeded in convincing the tyrant that there was {271} nothing to fear from him, and was eventually released. The eldest sister was Henry's wife and at his mercy--the wife of a man who, as his admirers mildly put it, 'was not uxorious.' She was within two months of her confinement. Doubtless for that reason her mother kept all misgivings to herself. Henry married the next sister, Cicely, to his old uncle Lord Welles,[38] who would ensure her silence. She was married in that very year, and sent off to Lincolnshire. The three youngest were children, and in due time could be married to his adherents, or shut up in a nunnery.[39] Others who knew much, and must have suspected more, were silent in public, for their fortunes, perhaps their lives, depended on their silence. Yet the guilty tyrant could have known no peace. He must have been haunted by the fear of detection, however industriously he might cause reports to be spread and histories to be written, in which his predecessor was charged with his crimes. Then there was the horror of having to deal with his accomplices. Here fortune favoured him. Green died in the end of 1486[40]; though hush money seems to have been paid to 'Black Will' for some time longer.[41] John Dighton {272} was presented by Henry VII. with the living of Fulbeck near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on May 2, 1487.[42] But he was expected to live on the other side of the Channel. Sir James Tyrrel received ample recompense. He seems to have been appointed to the office of Constable of Guisnes immediately after the date of his second general pardon.[43] He was next sent as ambassador to Maximilian, King of the Romans, to conclude a perpetual league and treaty. In 1493 Tyrrel was one of the Commissioners for negotiating the Treaty of Etaples with France. In August 1487 he received a grant for life of the Stewardship of the King's Lordship of Ogmore in Wales. But Henry, although he was obliged to reward his accomplices, was anxious to keep them on the other side of the Channel as much as possible. Dighton had to reside at Calais. Tyrrel was required to make an exchange, giving up his estates in Wales to the King, and receiving revenues from the county of Guisnes of equal value.[44] In 1498 Henry still addressed him as his well-beloved and faithful councillor. [Sidenote: Arrest of Tyrrel]