give him up, he found it necessary to do something. Accordingly he
made a desperate sally, and landed, with only a few hundred men, on
the coast of Deal. But he was soon glad to get back to the place
from whence he came; for the country people rose against his
followers, killed a great many, and took a hundred and fifty
prisoners: who were all driven to London, tied together with
ropes, like a team of cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some
part or other of the sea-shore; in order, that if any more men
should come over with Perkin Warbeck, they might see the bodies as
a warning before they landed.
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
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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.
Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and down, and never to find
rest anywhere – a sad fate: almost a sufficient punishment for an
imposture, which he seems in time to have half believed himself –
lost his Scottish refuge through a truce being made between the two
Kings; and found himself, once more, without a country before him
in which he could lay his head. But James (always honourable and
true to him, alike when he melted down his plate, and even the