Westminster Hall. In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he sat
himself down between two great noblemen, and told the people that
he began the new reign in that place, because the first duty of a
sovereign was to administer the laws equally to all, and to
maintain justice. He then mounted his horse and rode back to the
City, where he was received by the clergy and the crowd as if he
really had a right to the throne, and really were a just man. The
clergy and the crowd must have been rather ashamed of themselves in
secret, I think, for being such poor-spirited knaves.
The new King and his Queen were soon crowned with a great deal of
show and noise, which the people liked very much; and then the King
set forth on a royal progress through his dominions. He was
crowned a second time at York, in order that the people might have
show and noise enough; and wherever he went was received with
shouts of rejoicing - from a good many people of strong lungs, who
were paid to strain their throats in crying, 'God save King
Richard!' The plan was so successful that I am told it has been
imitated since, by other usurpers, in other progresses through
other dominions.
While he was on this journey, King Richard stayed a week at
Warwick. And from Warwick he sent instructions home for one of the
wickedest murders that ever was done - the murder of the two young
princes, his nephews, who were shut up in the Tower of London.
Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time Governor of the Tower. To
him, by the hands of a messenger named JOHN GREEN, did King Richard
send a letter, ordering him by some means to put the two young
princes to death. But Sir Robert - I hope because he had children
of his own, and loved them - sent John Green back again, riding and
spurring along the dusty roads, with the answer that he could not
do so horrible a piece of work. The King, having frowningly
considered a little, called to him SIR JAMES TYRREL, his master of
the horse, and to him gave authority to take command of the Tower,
whenever he would, for twenty-four hours, and to keep all the keys
of the Tower during that space of time. Tyrrel, well knowing what
was wanted, looked about him for two hardened ruffians, and chose
JOHN DIGHTON, one of his own grooms, and MILES FOREST, who was a
murderer by trade. Having secured these two assistants, he went,
upon a day in August, to the Tower, showed his authority from the
King, took the command for four-and-twenty hours, and obtained
possession of the keys. And when the black night came he went
creeping, creeping, like a guilty villain as he was, up the dark,
stone winding stairs, and along the dark stone passages, until he
came to the door of the room where the two young princes, having
said their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each other's arms.
And while he watched and listened at the door, he sent in those
evil demons, John Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the two
princes with the bed and pillows, and carried their bodies down the
stairs, and buried them under a great heap of stones at the
staircase foot. And when the day came, he gave up the command of
the Tower, and restored the keys, and hurried away without once
looking behind him; and Sir Robert Brackenbury went with fear and
sadness to the princes' room, and found the princes gone for ever.
You know, through all this history, how true it is that traitors
are never true, and you will not be surprised to learn that the
Duke of Buckingham soon turned against King Richard, and joined a
Page 141
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
great conspiracy that was formed to dethrone him, and to place the
crown upon its rightful owner's head. Richard had meant to keep
the murder secret; but when he heard through his spies that this
conspiracy existed, and that many lords and gentlemen drank in
secret to the healths of the two young princes in the Tower, he
made it known that they were dead. The conspirators, though
thwarted for a moment, soon resolved to set up for the crown
against the murderous Richard, HENRY Earl of Richmond, grandson of
Catherine: that widow of Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor.
And as Henry was of the house of Lancaster, they proposed that he
should marry the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the
late King, now the heiress of the house of York, and thus by
uniting the rival families put an end to the fatal wars of the Red
and White Roses. All being settled, a time was appointed for Henry
to come over from Brittany, and for a great rising against Richard
to take place in several parts of England at the same hour. On a
certain day, therefore, in October, the revolt took place; but
unsuccessfully. Richard was prepared, Henry was driven back at sea
by a storm, his followers in England were dispersed, and the Duke
of Buckingham was taken, and at once beheaded in the market-place
at Salisbury.
The time of his success was a good time, Richard thought, for
summoning a Parliament and getting some money. So, a Parliament
was called, and it flattered and fawned upon him as much as he
could possibly desire, and declared him to be the rightful King of
England, and his only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the
next heir to the throne.
Richard knew full well that, let the Parliament say what it would,
the Princess Elizabeth was remembered by people as the heiress of
the house of York; and having accurate information besides, of its
being designed by the conspirators to marry her to Henry of
Richmond, he felt that it would much strengthen him and weaken
them, to be beforehand with them, and marry her to his son. With
this view he went to the Sanctuary at Westminster, where the late
King's widow and her daughter still were, and besought them to come
to Court: where (he swore by anything and everything) they should
be safely and honourably entertained. They came, accordingly, but
had scarcely been at Court a month when his son died suddenly - or
was poisoned - and his plan was crushed to pieces.
In this extremity, King Richard, always active, thought, 'I must
make another plan.' And he made the plan of marrying the Princess
Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece. There was one
difficulty in the way: his wife, the Queen Anne, was alive. But,
he knew (remembering his nephews) how to remove that obstacle, and
he made love to the Princess Elizabeth, telling her he felt
perfectly confident that the Queen would die in February. The
Princess was not a very scrupulous young lady, for, instead of
rejecting the murderer of her brothers with scorn and hatred, she
openly declared she loved him dearly; and, when February came and
the Queen did not die, she expressed her impatient opinion that she
was too long about it. However, King Richard was not so far out in
his prediction, but, that she died in March - he took good care of
that - and then this precious pair hoped to be married. But they
were disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage was so unpopular
in the country, that the King's chief counsellors, RATCLIFFE and
CATESBY, would by no means undertake to propose it, and the King
was even obliged to declare in public that he had never thought of
such a thing.
He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by all classes of his
subjects. His nobles deserted every day to Henry's side; he dared
Page 142
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
not call another Parliament, lest his crimes should be denounced
there; and for want of money, he was obliged to get Benevolences
from the citizens, which exasperated them all against him. It was
said too, that, being stricken by his conscience, he dreamed
frightful dreams, and started up in the night-time, wild with
terror and remorse. Active to the last, through all this, he
issued vigorous proclamations against Henry of Richmond and all his
followers, when he heard that they were coming against him with a
Fleet from France; and took the field as fierce and savage as a
wild boar - the animal represented on his shield.
Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand men at Milford Haven,
and came on against King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with
an army twice as great, through North Wales. On Bosworth Field the
two armies met; and Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, and
seeing them crowded with the English nobles who had abandoned him,
turned pale when he beheld the powerful Lord Stanley and his son
(whom he had tried hard to retain) among them. But, he was as
brave as he was wicked, and plunged into the thickest of the fight.
He was riding hither and thither, laying about him in all
directions, when he observed the Earl of Northumberland - one of
his few great allies - to stand inactive, and the main body of his
troops to hesitate. At the same moment, his desperate glance
caught Henry of Richmond among a little group of his knights.
Riding hard at him, and crying 'Treason!' he killed his standardbearer,
fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, and aimed a powerful
stroke at Henry himself, to cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley
parried it as it fell, and before Richard could raise his arm
again, he was borne down in a press of numbers, unhorsed, and
killed. Lord Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised and
trampled, and stained with blood, and put it upon Richmond's head,
amid loud and rejoicing cries of 'Long live King Henry!'
That night, a horse was led up to the church of the Grey Friars at
Leicester; across whose back was tied, like some worthless sack, a
naked body brought there for burial. It was the body of the last
of the Plantagenet line, King Richard the Third, usurper and
murderer, slain at the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirtysecond
year of his age, after a reign of two years.
CHAPTER XXVI - ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH
KING HENRY THE SEVENTH did not turn out to be as fine a fellow as
the nobility and people hoped, in the first joy of their
deliverance from Richard the Third. He was very cold, crafty, and
calculating, and would do almost anything for money. He possessed
considerable ability, but his chief merit appears to have been that
he was not cruel when there was nothing to be got by it.
The new King had promised the nobles who had espoused his cause
that he would marry the Princess Elizabeth. The first thing he
did, was, to direct her to be removed from the castle of Sheriff
Hutton in Yorkshire, where Richard had placed her, and restored to
the care of her mother in London. The young Earl of Warwick,
Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the late Duke of Clarence, had
been kept a prisoner in the same old Yorkshire Castle with her.
This boy, who was now fifteen, the new King placed in the Tower for
safety. Then he came to London in great state, and gratified the
people with a fine procession; on which kind of show he often very
much relied for keeping them in good humour. The sports and feasts
Page 143
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
which took place were followed by a terrible fever, called the
Sweating Sickness; of which great numbers of people died. Lord
Mayors and Aldermen are thought to have suffered most from it;
whether, because they were in the habit of over-eating themselves,
or because they were very jealous of preserving filth and nuisances
in the City (as they have been since), I don't know.
The King's coronation was postponed on account of the general illhealth,
and he afterwards deferred his marriage, as if he were not
very anxious that it should take place: and, even after that,
deferred the Queen's coronation so long that he gave offence to the
York party. However, he set these things right in the end, by
hanging some men and seizing on the rich possessions of others; by
granting more popular pardons to the followers of the late King
than could, at first, be got from him; and, by employing about his
Court, some very scrupulous persons who had been employed in the
previous reign.
As this reign was principally remarkable for two very curious
impostures which have become famous in history, we will make those
two stories its principal feature.
There was a priest at Oxford of the name of Simons, who had for a
Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and partly to carry out
the designs of a secret party formed against the King, this priest
declared that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the young Earl
of Warwick; who (as everybody might have known) was safely locked
up in the Tower of London. The priest and the boy went over to
Ireland; and, at Dublin, enlisted in their cause all ranks of the
people: who seem to have been generous enough, but exceedingly
irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the governor of Ireland, declared
that he believed the boy to be what the priest represented; and the
boy, who had been well tutored by the priest, told them such things
of his childhood, and gave them so many descriptions of the Royal
Family, that they were perpetually shouting and hurrahing, and
drinking his health, and making all kinds of noisy and thirsty
demonstrations, to express their belief in him. Nor was this
feeling confined to Ireland alone, for the Earl of Lincoln - whom
the late usurper had named as his successor - went over to the
young Pretender; and, after holding a secret correspondence with
the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy - the sister of Edward the Fourth,
who detested the present King and all his race - sailed to Dublin
with two thousand German soldiers of her providing. In this
promising state of the boy's fortunes, he was crowned there, with a
crown taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary; and was
then, according to the Irish custom of those days, carried home on
the shoulders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal more
strength than sense. Father Sim
ons, you may be sure, was mighty
busy at the coronation.
Ten days afterwards, the Germans, and the Irish, and the priest,
and the boy, and the Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to
invade England. The King, who had good intelligence of their
movements, set up his standard at Nottingham, where vast numbers
resorted to him every day; while the Earl of Lincoln could gain but
very few. With his small force he tried to make for the town of
Newark; but the King's army getting between him and that place, he
had no choice but to risk a battle at Stoke. It soon ended in the
complete destruction of the Pretender's forces, one half of whom
were killed; among them, the Earl himself. The priest and the
baker's boy were taken prisoners. The priest, after confessing the
trick, was shut up in prison, where he afterwards died - suddenly
perhaps. The boy was taken into the King's kitchen and made a
Page 144
Dickens, Charles - A Child's History of England
turnspit. He was afterwards raised to the station of one of the
King's falconers; and so ended this strange imposition.
There seems reason to suspect that the Dowager Queen - always a
restless and busy woman - had had some share in tutoring the
baker's son. The King was very angry with her, whether or no. He
seized upon her property, and shut her up in a convent at
Bermondsey.
One might suppose that the end of this story would have put the
Irish people on their guard; but they were quite ready to receive a
second impostor, as they had received the first, and that same
troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon gave them the opportunity.
All of a sudden there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from
Portugal, a young man of excellent abilities, of very handsome
appearance and most winning manners, who declared himself to be
Richard, Duke of York, the second son of King Edward the Fourth.
'O,' said some, even of those ready Irish believers, 'but surely
that young Prince was murdered by his uncle in the Tower!' - 'It IS
supposed so,' said the engaging young man; 'and my brother WAS
killed in that gloomy prison; but I escaped - it don't matter how,
at present - and have been wandering about the world for seven long
years.' This explanation being quite satisfactory to numbers of
the Irish people, they began again to shout and to hurrah, and to